After years of working in parallel, two old friends are breaking new ground together.

What happens when a pioneer in big-picture immune research joins forces with a renowned researcher that has a foot in both mathematics and engineering?

The Snow Centre for Immune Health’s Professor Phil Hodgkin and Northeastern University’s Professor Ken Duffy share how they are teaming up to unlock the keys to immune health.

Professor Ken Duffy

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Phil since 2007, when he spent a sabbatical at the Hamilton Institute in Ireland, where I was based at the time. His talks were so inspiring that at the time I shifted much of my research focus toward the life sciences. Phil’s vision was bold, and I wanted to be part of it.

“I’ve never passed up an opportunity to work with Phil, which is why I’m excited to collaborate with the Snow Centre. My goal is to bring complementary mathematical expertise to support Phil and his team to help them achieve their vision.”

My background is in applied mathematics, but my focus has always been on interdisciplinary research where rigorous thinking can help provide solutions that challenge conventional paradigms.

My primary research interests are in probability and statistics, and their application to science and engineering. When I first met Phil, I thought that this skillset would be most useful in extracting more information from the complex, clever data that the lab generated. Over time, I came to see that having a distinct perspective can be of utility throughout a research project.

Initially, I used advanced mathematical tools to help Phil’s lab extract more features from their Cyton Model. Over time, my role expanded to include statistical analysis and assisting in the design of experiments to guide Phil’s lab’s goals. I’ve never actually performed an experiment, that’s his domain! But I have contributed to the thinking behind them.

The team’s discoveries about how immune cells respond to stimuli came from an entirely new approach to assessing the immune response. Scientifically, these findings have been significant. Practically, they set the stage for Phil’s long-term vision: applying this understanding to human health.

What excites me most is the potential impact on patients and the opportunity to work closely again with the Hodgkin Lab.

Professor Phil Hodgkin

Ken has a unique ability to apply sophisticated mathematics to biology. It’s rare to work with someone with such a depth of mathematical expertise who can help to solve biological problems. His contributions to my team’s work are an integral piece of the puzzle.

This project builds on years of collaboration. When we first met in 2007, we bonded over the idea that randomness might play a key role in immune cell behaviour.

At the time, I was developing a model to explain differences between cells as the result of random processes. Ken’s expertise in probability theory made him the perfect partner.

Together, we’ve analysed experimental data and refined our understanding of immune cell fate. One of our key findings was that cell division, death and differentiation occur independently but are all influenced by random factors. This insight became a foundation for our current methods.

My lab developed the original Cell Timer (Cyton) model before I met Ken, but the current version, Cyton2, was shaped through our collaboration.

That work, lead by our PhD student HoChan Cheon, is now central to our efforts at the Snow Centre.

“What excites me most is the potential to explain how complex immune disorders arise consistently across the population. It’s a bold step toward our long-term goal: being able to predict an individual’s immune journey to guide diagnosis and treatments.”

Using the cell timer model, we’re gathering detailed data on B and T cell behaviour to simulate immune trait inheritance and assess the genetic propensity to developing an immune disorder.

We’re layering this with DNA sequencing and AI tools to link genetic differences to immune cell behaviour. If successful, we’ll compare gene testing with functional cell-based tests – an essential step toward better diagnosis and treatment.

If I had to name one achievement from our partnership, it’s that we’ve uncovered rules for immune cell control that are fundamental to how the immune system works.

Our shared vision is to use these rules to make immunology predictive – much like physics. And with Ken’s expertise, we’re well on our way!