Rate My Professor Philippa Marrack

Philippa Marrack, PhD, FRS, is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where she has held professorial positions since 1985 in departments including Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and Immunology. She currently serves as Chair of the Department of Biomedical Research at National Jewish Health, having previously chaired the Department of Immunology and Genomic Medicine there. She was also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1986 to 2017. Marrack obtained her B.A. in Biochemistry in 1967 and Ph.D. in Biological Sciences in 1970 from New Hall, University of Cambridge, England. Her early career included postdoctoral fellowships at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Rochester, followed by faculty appointments at the University of Rochester from 1975 to 1979. In 1979, she joined the Department of Medicine at National Jewish Health, and in 1980, she became Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Marrack's research specializes in immunology, with a focus on T cells, including T cell receptors, major histocompatibility complex-restricted antigen recognition, thymic selection, T cell tolerance, superantigens, T cell survival, and mechanisms preventing autoimmunity. Her laboratory has also investigated age-associated B cells (ABCs), which produce autoantibodies and contribute to antiviral responses in infections such as SARS-CoV-2. She has authored seminal publications, including 'The T cell receptor' (Science, 1987), 'Control of T cell viability' (Annual Review of Immunology, 2004), and 'How the T cell repertoire becomes peptide and MHC specific' (Cell, 2005). Marrack has received major honors such as election to the National Academy of Sciences (1989), Fellow of the Royal Society (1997), L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Award (2004), Wolf Prize in Medicine (2015), and Novartis Prize for Immunology (2016). Her work has significantly advanced understanding of immune recognition and tolerance.