Professor
Tulane University
Dr. Jay K. Kolls is the John W. Deming Chair in Internal Medicine, Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics and Director, Center for Translational Research in Infection and Inflammation at the Tulane School of Medicine. Prior to that, he was Director of the Richard King Mellon Foundation Institute for Pediatric Research at the Children Hospital of Pittsburgh/UPMC. He earned his medical degree from the University of Maryland. He completed his Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency training at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, LA, followed by fellowships in Adult and Pediatric Pulmonology at LSU and Tulane Health Sciences Center respectively. He performed a research fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Bruce Beutler (Nobel Laureate, 2011) at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX. Dr Kolls was recruited in July 2003 to the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he was Division Chief of Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine. Dr. Kolls has been member of the American Thoracic Society since 1989 and a member of the Allergy, Immunology, and Inflammation (AII) Assembly member since 1993. He is also a member of the American Association of Immunology, American Society of Microbiology, American Society of Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. Dr. Kolls has authored or co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed articles. The major goal of Dr. Kolls’ research is to investigate mechanisms of mucosal host defenses in the lung in normal and immunocompromised hosts as well as identifying immune defects in Cystic Fibrosis. Presently, his lab is investigating how IL-23, IL-17, IL-22, and IL-22 binding protein regulate host defense against extracellular pathogens in part using single cell RNAseq. He is also using single cell transcriptomics to study the role of lung tissue resident memory cells in COVID-19. Dr. Kolls is a past member and Chair of the AII program committee and he has been co-Chair and Chair of the Gordon Conference on the Biology of Acute Respiratory Infection and has co-organized a Keystone symposia on Th17 cells and Asthma and COPD. He is past Assembly Chair of the Allergy Immunology and Inflammation Assembly of the American Thoracic Society.