Garry Nolan's Biography

Garry Nolan, Professor/Director, Stanford University

Dr. Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He trained with Leonard Herzenberg (for his Ph.D.) and Dr. David Baltimore (for postdoctoral work for the first cloning/characterization of NF-?B p65/RelA and the development of rapid retroviral production systems). He has published over 160 research articles and is the holder of 17 US patents, and has been honored as one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University. He is a recent recipient of the Teal Innovator Award from the Department of Defense and received an award for “Outstanding Research Achievement in 2011” from the Nature Publishing Group. Dr. Nolan was the founder of Rigel Inc. (NASDAQ: RIGL), and Nodality, Inc., a diagnostics development company and serves on the Boards of Directors of several companies, as well as consults for other biotechnology companies. He is an outspoken proponent of translating public investment in basic research to serve public welfare. His areas of research include hematopoiesis, cancer and leukemia, autoimmunity and inflammation, and computational approaches for network and systems immunology. Dr. Nolan’s most recent efforts are focused on a single cell analysis advance using a mass spectrometry-flow cytometry hybrid device, the so-call “CyTOF”. The approach uses an advanced ion plasma source to determine the levels of tagged reagents bound to cells—enabling a vast increase in the number of parameters that can be measured per cell. His laboratory has already begun a large scale mapping of the hematopoietic hierarchy in healthy human bone marrow at an unprecedented level of detail. Dr. Nolan’s efforts are to enable a deeper understanding not only of normal immune function, but also detailed substructures of leukemias and solid cancers—which will enable wholly new understandings that will enable better management of disease and clinical outcomes.