Biography
Rhodri Ceredig was Stokes Professor of Immunology at the University of Galway from 2008 until retirement in 2018. Throughout most of his research career, he was a basic cellular and molecular immunologist whose approach to immunology was heavily influenced by experimental hematology. For his post-doctoral studies in Lausanne, he was one of the first to combine flow cytometry, monoclonal antibodies and limiting dilution analysis to quantify the alloreactive T cell response. He also identified for the first time, early T cell progenitors in the thymus, namely so-called CD4, CD8 “double negative” cells. At the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Canberra, he was responsible for establishing a functional flow cytometry facility and with Peter Doherty, dissected the inflammatory infiltrate in mouse lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection and showed that this immune response in vivo obeyed the now-accepted rules of MHC restriction. At the Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, he learnt how molecular biology could impact on his own research interests.
To learn more about B cell development, he collaborated with and later joined the group of Ton Rolink at the Basel Institute for Immunology. Whilst at the French Atomic Energy Commission laboratories in Grenoble, he was also a guest scientist in Ton Rolink’s group at the University of Basel. Here, he collaborated with scientists investigating the in vitro immunological properties of human mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC). After moving to Galway in 2008, he became interested in the DNA damage response of both MSC and thymocytes. With Ton Rolink and Geoff Brown at the University of Birmingham and using EU Marie Sklowdoska-Curie funding, he became more interested in the general aspects of lymphocyte development and hematopoietic lineage commitment.
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