[Spotlight seminar] Systems Human Immunology and AI: Immune Setpoint and Immune Health
September 23, 2025 @ 15:15 – 16:15 CEST
Speaker: Professor John Tsang, Yale University
Abstract
The immune system, critical for human health and implicated in many diseases, defends against pathogens, monitors physiological stress, and maintains tissue and organismal homeostasis. It exhibits substantial variability both within and across individuals and populations. Recent technological and conceptual progress in systems human immunology has provided predictive insights that link personal immune states to intervention responses and disease susceptibilities. Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning (ML), has emerged as a powerful tool for analyzing complex immune data sets, revealing hidden patterns across biological scales, and enabling predictive models for individualistic immune responses and potentially personalized interventions. Here I light our recent work in deciphering human immune variation and predicting outcomes, particularly through the concepts of immune setpoint, immune health, and use of the immune system as a window for measuring health.
Biography
John Tsang is a systems immunologist, computational biologist, and engineer. He is the Anthony N. Brady Professor of Immunobiology and Biomedical Engineering at Yale University, the Founding Director of the Yale Center for Systems and Engineering Immunology (CSEI), the Yale Lead and an Investigator at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub New York, and the co-Chief Scientific Officer of the Human Immunome Project (a non-profit dedicated to mapping human immune variation around the globe to develop AI models of human immune health for the benefit of all). Tsang has pioneered and established the concepts and predictive metrics of human immune setpoints and immune health including responses to vaccines, infections, autoimmunity, and therapeutics in human populations spanning the lifespan from infancy to old age. Tsang is also interested in programming immune cells to enable longitudinal immune and health monitoring of the entire body. Tsang has received numerous awards including multiple NIH Merit Awards for his research and leadership in systems immunology, COVID-19, and human immunology. He has advised numerous programs and organizations, including the Allen Institute, the Gates Foundation, CEPI, World Allergy Organization, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Snow Medical (Australia), and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (Australia). Tsang earned his Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University and trained in computer engineering (BASc) and computer science (MMath) at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Host: burcu.ayoglu@scilifelab.se
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