Ramnik Xavier is a core institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he serves as director of the Klarman Cell Observatory. He is also director of the Broad’s Immunology Program and co-director of the Broad’s Infectious Disease and Microbiome Program. He is the Kurt J. Isselbacher Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; director of the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology and professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); and co-director of the Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics at MIT.
His laboratory focuses on systematic characterization of genetic variants to understand the regulation of barrier defense, innate and adaptive immunity; chemical biology to control cellular disease phenotypes suggested by human genetics; molecular mechanisms to determine roles of the microbiome in health and disease; and development of computational approaches to uncover patterns of human and microbial pathway regulation during disease and treatment.
At the Broad, Xavier expands research efforts in immunology and investigations of fundamental questions in human disease biology. These efforts further define the immune processes that play key roles in both healthy and disease states and complement existing programs at the Broad with strong immunologic components, such as those centered on cancer biology, neurodegenerative and psychiatric conditions, medical and population genetics, and infectious disease.
Xavier has spent his academic career at MGH, where he served as chief of gastroenterology for nine years and is currently director of the NIH-funded Center for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
