Dr. Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He trained with Leonard Herzenberg (for his Ph.D.) and Nobelist Dr. David Baltimore (for postdoctoral work for the first cloning/characterization of NF-?B p65/RelA and the development of 293T rapid retroviral production systems). He has published over 190 research papers, is the holder of 17 US patents, and has been honored as one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University. He has trained more than 30 graduate students and 40 postdoctoral or clinical fellows.
Dr. Nolan's areas of research include hematopoiesis, cancer and leukemia, autoimmunity and inflammation, and computational approaches for network and systems immunology. His most recent efforts are focused on a single cell analysis advance using a mass spectrometry-flow cytometry hybrid device, the so-call "CyTOF". The approach uses an advanced ion plasma source to determine the levels of tagged reagents bound to cells — enabling a vast increase in the number of parameters that can be measured per cell. Another recent innovation is termed molecular ion beam imaging (MIBI) a system that also uses mass tags that will enable sub-light imaging (5 nm resolution) of tissue sections with 50 or more parameters per image. His laboratory has already begun a large scale mapping of the hematopoietic hierarchy in healthy human bone marrow at an unprecedented level of detail. Dr. Nolan's efforts are directed to enable a deeper understanding not only of normal immune function, trauma, and other inflammatory events but also detailed substructures of leukemias and solid cancers — which will enable wholly new understandings that will enable better management of disease and clinical outcomes.