Director's Seminar Series: Dr Gabriel Victora

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Gabriel D. Victora is the Laurie and Peter Grauer Professor at The Rockefeller University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His laboratory studies how antibody responses evolve after infection and immunization, with a particular focus on germinal centers, the lymphoid structures in which B cells mutate, compete, and are selected to produce higher-affinity antibodies. His work has helped define how helper T cells regulate B cell selection, how antibody responses are shaped by repeat exposure, and how these evolutionary processes generate immunological memory. By combining imaging, cellular immunology, molecular tools, and whole-organ analysis, the Victora lab seeks to understand how protective antibody responses are refined, with implications for vaccine design against pathogens such as influenza and HIV, as well as immune-mediated diseases such as allergy.

Victora trained first as a musician before moving into immunology, earning an M.Sci. from the University of São Paulo and a Ph.D. from New York University. He was a Whitehead Fellow before joining Rockefeller, where he became Professor in 2025. His honours include the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists, Searle Scholar Award, MacArthur Fellowship, NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator Award, Pew-Stewart Scholar Award, AAI-BD Biosciences Investigator Award, Pew Innovation Fund Investigator award, and appointment as an HHMI Investigator.