Vijay Kumar Kuchroo

Director

An American immunologist born in Baramulla, Jammu and Kashmir, India, and founding Director of the Gene Lay Institute of Immunology and Inflammation — established in 2023 with a $100 million gift and spanning Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He is the Samuel L. Wasserstrom Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, a senior scientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and an institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He earned a Bachelor of Veterinary Science from Haryana Agricultural University and a PhD in veterinary pathology from the University of Queensland, then trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the NIH and Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty in 1991. He first characterised the inhibitory receptor TIM-3 in 2002 — now a target in cancer immunotherapy — and described pathogenic Th17 cells in 2005. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed articles and received the American Association of Immunologists' Meritorious Career Award in 2025.