We Are Neuroimmunology | Mid-Career Awardees 2023

Michael Wilson

Professor, Neurology
UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
School of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco (CA), USA

Michael Wilson is a neurologist and physician-scientist at University of California, San Francisco’s Weill Institute for Neurosciences in the Department of Neurology’s Division of Neuroimmunology and Glial Biology. He is the founding director of the UCSF Center for Encephalitis and Meningitis, and his lab does translational research on neuroinflammatory disorders with the aim of developing improved diagnostics and therapeutics.

Markus Kleinewietfeld

Department of Immunology and Infection, Biomedical Research Institute, Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium.
VIB Center for Inflammation Research (IRC), Gent/Hasselt, Belgium.
University Multiple Sclerosis Center (UMSC), Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium. 

Markus Kleinewietfeld studied biology and immunology at the University of Cologne (Germany). Afterwards, he did his PhD thesis at Free University and Max-Delbrück-Center (MDC) Berlin, Germany on regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the context of autoimmunity and Multiple Sclerosis (MS). After a postdoctoral stay at the MDC and research visit at the Singapore-Immunology-Network (SIgN) in autoimmune diseases, he did a second postdoc at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute (USA) studying human T cells in the context of MS. After his stay in Harvard, he became a member of the Faculty of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine (USA) and concentrated on studying the impact of environmental factors, like nutrition and the microbiome on the T cell balance and neuroinflammation. He then relocated to Europe to take a position as group-leader (Translational Immunology Lab) at the Medical Faculty of TU-Dresden (Germany). Currently, Prof. Kleinewietfeld heads the Laboratory of Translational Immunomodulation at the VIB and BIOMED institutes at Hasselt University in Belgium. The research of Prof. Kleinewietfeld has significantly contributed to the field and is presently focusing on two major topics: I) Environmental-factors (nutrition/microbiota) impacting autoimmunity and II) Plasticity/immunometabolism of T cells in the context of autoimmunity/neuroinflammation.