Michael S. Krangel, Ph.D., is currently serving as interim chair of the Department of Immunology at Duke University Medical Center .  He takes over from Thomas F. Tedder, Ph.D., who served as chair from 1993-2008. 

 

Dr. Krangel was born in New York City in 1954.  He received a B.S. in Biochemistry from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1976.  He did his graduate work with Jack Strominger in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard University , and received a Ph.D. in 1982 for his work on major histocompatibility antigens.  He then moved to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for postdoctoral training.  In 1985, Dr. Krangel joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School , first as Instructor and then as Assistant Professor of Pathology, housed within the Division of Tumor Virology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.  There he became interested in T cell receptors and the organization and regulation of T cell receptor genes.  He then moved to Duke University Medical Center in 1990, initially as Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology.  He is currently Professor of Immunology and also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies in Immunology.  Dr. Krangel’s current work focuses on T lymphocyte development in the thymus, with an emphasis on the molecular mechanisms that impart developmental regulation to the process of V(D)J recombination of T cell receptor genes.