Derya Unutmaz

Derya Unutmaz, M.D., earned his medical degree at Marmara University, held postdoctoral positions at Novartis and NYU, and then joined Vanderbilt as an Assistant Professor. In 2006, he became a tenured professor at NYU. Since 2015, he has been a Professor at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine and an affiliated professor at UConn. With over 150 publications, multiple patents, more than 31,000 citations, and an h-index of 77, he has pioneered genetic and functional assays for human immune cells, including early lentiviral vector systems. His laboratory has discovered several functional human T cell subsets, decoded their mechanisms, advanced cancer immunotherapies, explored precision medicine for ME/CFS, investigated COVID-19 immunity, and now focuses on immune engineering for cancer and reversing immune aging. He is also deeply involved in applying AI to biomedicine, is a recipient of the OpenAI Scientist Award, and was also featured in the latest GPT-5 release during August 2025.