Casey Weaver, M.D., Leonard H. Robinson Endowed Chair in Pathology and professor in the Division of Anatomic Pathology, was named Distinguished Professor in Pathology by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees on April 29.
In 2023, Weaver was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors an American scientist can be awarded. For 30 years, Weaver has studied T cells, one of the most important white blood cells of the immune system in their role to protect the body from infection and cancer. Weaver delivered UAB’s Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2023. This is the highest honor bestowed by UAB’s academic health center on a faculty member who has advanced the frontiers of science and made outstanding contributions to education, research, and public service.
Three decades ago, Weaver came to UAB from Washington University in St. Louis, where he received immunology training during his residency in pathology. He runs a lab with about 20 researchers at any given time, many of whom stay with him for years, and has mentored many predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees. He has maintained continuous funding from the NIH, as well as other funding agencies throughout his career.
After his arrival at UAB, Weaver worked his way up from assistant to full professor in nine years and was named to the Wyatt and Susan Haskell Endowed Professorship in Pathology in 2007. In the following years, the endowment was elevated to a chair. In 2023, Weaver was named Leonard H. Robinson Endowed Chair in Pathology.
Weaver has published nearly 200 peer-reviewed papers in outstanding high-impact and prestigious journals, including Science, Nature, Cell, Nature Immunology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Science Immunology, Nature Medicine, and eLife, and he is an author of Janeway’s Immunobiology, one of the leading immunology textbooks.
“Dr. Weaver’s contributions as a scientist and mentor have earned him well-deserved recognition,” said Cristina Magi-Galluzzi, M.D., Ph.D., Robert and Ruth Anderson Endowed Chair in Pathology. “He is a premier physician-scientist, whose research has made him a pioneer in the field of immunology. I couldn’t be prouder to have him on our team.”
Distinguished professorships are one of the highest honors bestowed at the university level. These appointments are made by the Board of Trustees to recognize faculty whose research or teaching accomplishments bring great credit to the institution through their unwavering dedication to excellence in teaching and/or research in their academic discipline.