Dr. Vinay Kumar received his undergraduate degree from Fergusson College, Pune, India and MBBS., from Punjab University. He completed his M.D in 1972 at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India, under the guidance of Dr M.G. Deo and Dr Ramalingaswami. In the same year, he was appointed Instructor at Boston University School of Medicine, where he rose to the rank of Associate Professor. In 1982 he moved to UT Southwestern (UTSW) Medical School in Dallas where he was appointed the Charles T. Ashworth Professor of Pathology in1983 and later Vernie Stembridge Distinguished Professor. He also served as the Associate Dean for Medical Education at UTSW. In March of 2000, he was appointed as Chairman of the Department of Pathology, at University of Chicago. In May 2007, he was appointed Executive Vice Dean of the Division of Biologic Sciences and the Pritzker Medical School at the University of Chicago. In this capacity he manages the research enterprise at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dr Kumar has made an international impact in two different areas of medicine: Research and Education. His research is devoted to the cellular and molecular biology of natural killer (NK) cells. In 1974, Dr. Kumar and his laboratory discovered the existence of the Natural Killer cells. NK cell therapy is now being tested in patients with leukemia. His group has identified key cytokines that are essential for NK cell development. Some of these cytokines are now in clinical trials for cancer treatment. He has over 160 peer reviewed publications in major journals including Nature, Science, Journal of Experimental Medicine, and Immunity. While his scientific accomplishments are well known to immunologists, the rest of the medical world knows him as the author of Robbins Pathology. Along with the late Drs. Stanley Robbins and Dr. Ramzi S. Cotran, Dr. Kumar has co-authored Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease and Basic Pathology for the past 30 years. Currently, he is the senior editor and author of both of these texts, now in their 8th editions. Together they are the most widely used pathology texts in the world and have also been translated into over 13 foreign languages. Essentially these books have defined the pathology curriculum for the world over the past three decades. Dr. Kumar has numerous awards for teaching and research, including the Cancer Research Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society and honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists in London. Both at Boston and Dallas, he received the Outstanding Teacher Award for many years in a row. He has served on the Immunobiology Study Section of NIH, the editorial board of the Journal of Immunology, and the test writing Committee of the National Board of Medical Examiners. He has been active in the American Society of Investigative Pathology and served as its President in 1998.