Our Story
The Human Immunome Project was born out of the Human Vaccines Project, which was an initiative from 2016-2022 led by Wayne Koff, PhD to unravel the variation of human immune response to vaccines, and to lay the foundation for research advances across infectious and non-communicable diseases.
La Jolla Conference 2022
In late 2022, we convened the “Human Immunome AI Summit” to outline how we could most effectively decode and model the immune system. Co-chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and immunologist Peter Doherty, PhD, the Nobel laureate, the Summit was keynoted by Dr. Eric Topol, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. It convened over 60 leading biomedical and AI scientists to consider the possibility that scientific and medical advances had reached a stage where we could conceivably build predictive and mechanistic models of the immune system. The questions were, Can we do this, and if so then how? And who should lead the charge? A new organization was born.
Planning Phase 2022-2023
After re-incorporating as the Human Immunome Project, Co-Chief Science Officers John Tsang, PhD from Yale and Shai Shen-Orr, PhD, from The Technion, whose strategic vision was sketched out at the La Jolla symposium, began translating that overarching vision into an achievable program. Hans Keirstead, PhD was recruited from the Human Vaccines Project board to assume leadership as Chief Executive Officer of HIP. Together, they articulated a global study protocol and scaling strategy to generate the world’s largest and most comprehensive immunological dataset and build publicly available AI models of the immune system. The release of the Scientific Strategy marked the next phase of the organization.
Fast Forward to Today
In 2025, Board Chair Jane Metcalfe assumed leadership of the organization as Executive Chair. In September of that year, Jane, John, and Shai announced the launch of the Scientific Partner Network, marking the largest collaboration in the history of systems immunology. With researchers representing 10 world-leading institutions across 5 continents, the Scientific Partner Network brings the world’s foremost computational systems immunologists together to further refine the scientific strategy, the core assays, a common study protocol, guidelines for participant engagement, as well as data storage and governance planning.
In November of 2025, the prestigious Banbury Center at Cold Spring Harbor Labs welcomed members of the Scientific Partner Network for HIP’s first in-person gathering, much as they had welcomed the Human Genome Project planners decades earlier. Watch this space for the meeting report and further updates on our progress.
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