David A. Hafler, MD, FANA
Yale School of Medicine
Dr. David A. Hafler is the William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology and Professor of Immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine. He also serves as Neurologist-in-Chief at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Dr. Hafler graduated magna cum laude in 1974 from Emory University with combined BS and MSc degrees in biochemistry, and earned his MD from the University of Miami School of Medicine in 1978. He completed his internship in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins, followed by a neurology residency at Cornell Medical Center–New York Hospital. He trained in immunology under Dr. Henry Kunkel at Rockefeller University and later at Harvard Medical School, joining the Harvard faculty in 1984. He became the Breakstone Professor of Neurology at Harvard in 1999 and was a founding Associate Member of the Broad Institute at MIT.
Dr. Hafler’s discoveries in the pathogenesis and treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) have significantly advanced the understanding of the disease and led to novel therapies. His seminal contributions include identifying circulating human autoreactive T cells and uncovering the mechanisms underlying their dysregulation, including the discovery of human regulatory T cells. He co-led the discovery of genetic variants that cause MS and demonstrated how these variants influence immune responses in the context of environmental factors—such as salt exposure—triggering the activation of autoreactive T cells.
He is the founder of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies and the International MS Genetics Consortium. Among his numerous honors, Dr. Hafler has received the NIH Jacob Javits Merit Award, the Dystel Prize for MS Research from the AAN, the University of Miami Distinguished Alumni Award, the Raymond Adams Prize from the ANA, and the 2023 AAI Steinman Award for Human Immunology Research.
Dr. Hafler is an Honorary Member of the Scandinavian Society for Immunology, a Fellow of both the American Association of Immunologists and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been elected to Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA), the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the National Academy of Medicine.