Blake Smith

Originally from NY, Blake is a 5th year MD-PhD student at Harvard Medical School and MIT. Blake is currently pursuing a PhD in Immunology, working jointly between the labs of Michael Birnbaum (MIT) and Stephanie Dougan (DFCI), to engineer a lentiviral delivery platform that can be used to harness antigen-specific T cell responses in cancer, autoimmunity, and infectious disease. Before moving to Boston, Blake studied molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale where he worked in Craig Crews’ lab to investigate the protein-protein interactions that drive PROTAC specificity both within kinase families and across the proteome. Outside of the lab, Blake loves trivia, comedy, and a good cup of coffee.