Professor Richard Flavell started his career in molecular biology. He was the first to perform reverse genetics in the early 1970s and was a co-discoverer of introns in eukaryotic genes in the late 1970s. Since 1980, his laboratory has used reverse genetics to study innate and adaptive immunity, T cell tolerance, apoptosis and autoimmunity, and the regulation of T cell differentiation. Professor Flavell’s focus has been on genetic approaches in mice, beginning with some of the very first Immunology transgenesis experiments. A major focus of the laboratory for the last 25 years are the inflammasomes, NLR family of innate sensors and their role in mucosal immunity and tissue biology, anti-infective responses, and inflammatory disease. A prevailing theme of his work has been the mechanisms of autoimmune disease. To study human autoimmune diseases in mice, since 2015 his lab has been developing an entirely novel humanized mouse model capable of supporting a human immune system. This mouse strain has been re-engineered via a human/mouse homolog gene replacement strategy to provide 6 human factors that are expressed physiologically, enabling generation of a humanized adaptive and innate immune system. Compared to other existing humanized mouse models, these mice, named MISTRG, have a functional adaptive immune system and a more comprehensive innate immune system. These mice have been successfully used to model several aspects of human diseases (infections, cancer, fibrosis, and hematopoiesis to name a few). Another focus has been the advancement of single cell genomics to identify high values targets for future study with the goal of advancing translational therapies. Richard has published more than 1800 papers in peer reviewed journals and according to Google scholar his H-index is 277 and he is the top cited immunologist in the USA and second most cited immunologist in the world.