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November 26, 2007
Renowned immunologist Cooper to join Emory as GRA Eminent Scholar

By Holly korschun

Max Cooper, an internationally acclaimed physician and researcher regarded as one of the most influential scientists in the field of immunology, will join the faculty of Emory School of Medicine in January as a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. He will be appointed as a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and a member of the Emory Vaccine Center.

In a distinguished career spent almost entirely at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, Cooper has been a leader in research on the cellular, molecular and developmental biology of white blood cells. He is credited with a string of landmark discoveries that now provide a framework for understanding how these cells normally combat infections and how they go awry to produce leukemias, lymphomas and autoimmune diseases.

"We are extremely pleased that Dr. Cooper has chosen to join Emory as we continue to grow our research enterprise and add eminent scientists to our faculty," said Fred Sanfilippo, CEO of Woodruff Health Sciences Center. "He is an outstanding addition to an already stellar group of Emory immunologists."

Cooper is the ninth scientist to be recruited to Emory as a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. The GRA is a national model of a public-private partnership among Georgia universities, business and state government, and has so far attracted 57 Eminent Scholars to Georgia's research universities.

Cooper is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, and he has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He received the 3M Life Sciences Award, the Sandoz Prize and a lifetime achievement award from the American Association of Immunologists.

Cooper has published more than 420 scientific papers and 220 book chapters, presided over leading scientific societies and served on a host of blue-ribbon advisory councils as well as on the editorial boards of more than 30 scholarly journals.

He received his medical degree from Tulane University Medical School in 1957, subsequently trained as a pediatrician, and has remained active as a physician in addition to his research career.

"The impact of Dr. Cooper's many discoveries and insights would be hard to overstate," said Tristram Parslow, the chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. "Through his own discoveries and the many other researchers he has trained and inspired, Dr. Cooper's influence resonates through all of contemporary immunology."

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