Ronald N. Germain received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Since then he has investigated basic immunobiology, first on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, then in the Laboratory of Immunology, NIAID, NIH, and most recently at NIAID, NIH as Chief of the Laboratory of Immune System Biology. He has made key contributions to understanding MHC class II molecule structure–function relationships, the cell biology of antigen processing, the molecular basis of T cell recognition, and the application of systems biology to understanding immune function. More recently, his laboratory has explored the immune system using dynamic and static in situ microscopic methods that his laboratory helped pioneer. He has published more than 400 scholarly research papers and reviews. Among numerous honors, he was elected Associate member of EMBO (2008), elected to the National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences USA (2013), received the Meritorious Career Award from the American Association of Immunologists (2015), chosen as NIAID Outstanding Mentor (2016), elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2016) and has been designated an NIH Distinguished Investigator. He has trained more than 70 postdoctoral fellows, many of whom hold senior academic and administrative positions at leading universities and medical schools