Galit Alter, PhD, is the Vice President of Immunology Research at Moderna. She performed her undergraduate and graduate work at McGill University, developing new tools to study the cellular immune response to HIV. Inspired by the growing world of Systems Immunology, Dr. Alter moved to Harvard University where she systematically built new tools to study innate immune responses to viral infections, and to define the unexplored role of the humoral immune response in directing the innate immune system to fight viruses, bacteria, and parasites. These efforts gave birth to a new field of Systems Serology, that coupled to Systems based antibody Fc-engineering, has begun to define the immune correlates and mechanisms of protection against a range of pathogens and diseases, providing new insights for the design of next generation vaccines and monoclonal therapeutics.