Holger Russ
Diabetes Institute, U. of Florida
The emphasis of Dr.Russ`s research is on understanding the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms resulting in autoimmune type 1 diabetes (T1D) in humans, with a focus on immune tolerance mechanisms of the insulin-producing beta cells. During his career, Dr. Russ successfully worked on different aspects of T1D, which led to several original and important contributions to the fields of beta-, thymus- and stem cell- biology. Dr. Russ obtained his Ph.D. from Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University/Israel followed by postdoctoral work at the Diabetes Center at the University of California- San Francisco. He established his independent research program at the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes in Colorado in 2016, where he also served as Director for the P30 funded Disease Modeling Core. Dr. Russ recently joined the Diabetes Institute at the University of Florida to further expand his research program on tolerance mechanisms and induction in autoimmune diabetes. His lab employs state of the art human stem cell technology and primary human cell culture with genome engineering approaches to model and treat patients suffering from (auto-) immune diseases. Dr. Russ has published more than 60 manuscripts in prominent science journals and holds several patents in the regenerative medicine space. Dr. Russ `s long term goal is to understand why autoimmune conditions develop, identify novel intervention and treatment modalities that can be effectively translated into the clinic, and train and enable the next generation of scientists focused on regenerative medicine approaches.