Human Immunomics Initiative

Operating at the forefront of 21st century public health inquiry, the HII will merge large-scale cohort studies with advances in systems biology, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence (AI) to determine the rules of engagement for effective immunity in aging populations. HII will bring together a world-class group of interdisciplinary scientists, clinicians and public health specialists across epidemiology, immunology, biostatistics and AI, and will be closely integrated with the Human Vaccines Project’s global consortium.

The HII will focus on large-scale, transformative, mission-driven science and require the integration of creative academic inquiry with industrial rigor and scale in its organizational structure, management and decision making. It will provide a dynamic pathway for a new generation of scientists applying new technologies to achieve its mission. Over the next five years, the HII will complete foundational human immunity studies on internationally recognized cohorts across three continents. By using frontier computing, causal inference methods, AI and machine learning, HII will define the rules of engagement of the human immune system in aging populations.

The HII represents a coming together of imagination and execution, technology and vision. It will drive an unprecedented understanding of human immunity, opening discovery of powerful new vaccines, therapies and diagnostics against some of the world’s most devastating diseases from Alzheimer’s, cancers, to emerging pandemics. The tools are in place, and with an unparalleled global consortium centered at the Harvard Chan School, achievement of HII objectives to identify predictive biomarkers of effective immunity in aging populations has the potential to transform the future of global health.