Meet Our Researchers
Pierre Ankomah
“I want to show that immune variation from person to person isn't just noise. It's meaningful, predictable, and actionable.”
Why do patients facing the same infection often have wildly different outcomes? As an infectious disease physician, Pierre sees some patients recover quickly, while others spiral into severe illness. He believes the key lies not in the pathogen, but in the immune system. “My project will identify each person's unique immune response—like an immune fingerprint.”
Pierre’s focus is sepsis—when an infection triggers a life-threatening, dysregulated immune response. He will profile immune cells from sepsis patients using single-cell sequencing and apply machine learning to spot patterns that can potentially predict recovery or decline. “If my project succeeds, we won’t just learn about sepsis,” he says. “We’ll have a roadmap for treating infectious diseases more broadly.”