Harikesh Wong, PhD, a core member at the Ragon Institute and Assistant Professor in the MIT Department of Biology, has been named to the 2026 class of the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences. He is one of 21 early-career scientists selected this year by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which will provide four years of funding to support his research.
The Pew Scholars Program supports early-career investigators of outstanding promise whose work stands to advance human health. Wong was selected from 211 nominees put forward by leading academic institutions across the United States, joining a community of more than 1,000 scientists the program has supported since 1985.
Research in the Wong Lab focuses on how cells assemble and communicate to precisely control immune responses within tissues. Much of that control is collective rather than the work of any single cell, and the lab studies how groups of immune cells arrive at a kind of communal decision about whether to tolerate or attack a particular target. Using a multidisciplinary approach that ranges from high-resolution imaging to computational modeling, the Wong Lab aims to uncover how small shifts in immune regulation can lead to dramatically different outcomes, including tolerance, autoimmunity, and cancer.
“The immune system is more than a collection of individual cells. Many of its most important functions emerge from communities of cells working together within tissues to accomplish tasks that no individual cell could achieve on its own,” Wong said. “By understanding how cells organize and communicate, we hope to learn how the immune system makes choices—when to attack, when to hold back, when to repair—and why it sometimes gets things wrong.”
The Pew award will give the lab freedom to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven questions at the interface of immunology and systems biology.Founded in 1948, The Pew Charitable Trusts uses data to make a difference. Pew addresses the challenges of a changing world by illuminating issues, creating common ground, and advancing ambitious projects that lead to tangible progress.
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