Dr. David Brooks is a Senior Scientist in the Tumor Immunotherapy Program at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center (PMCC), and a Professor in the Department of Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Toronto. Dr. Brooks’ laboratory is focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms and cellular interactions that regulate immune responses in chronic infections and cancer. His group has shown that these diseases are associated with inflammation that counter-intuitively exacerbates immune dysfunction to promote disease progression. His goal is to use this information to design therapies that broadly restore immunity to fight infections and cancer. Before relocating to Canada, Dr. Brooks was a tenured Associate Professor and led a laboratory at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for seven years. Dr. Brooks did his post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Michael Oldstone at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California studying the immune response to chronic virus infection. Dr. Brooks earned his Ph.D. from UCLA under the mentorship of Dr. Jerome Zack, studying HIV latency and therapeutic strategies to reactivate the latent virus. Dr. Brooks earned his B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Arizona. He was born and raised in Venice, California.