Iliyan Iliev is an Immunologist and a Professor at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University in New York. He is the head of the laboratory for Mycobiota and Mucosal Immunology and a Co-Director of the Microbiome core laboratory at WCM. He earned his PhD from the European School of Molecular Medicine and the University of Milan and was previously associated with the Tohoku University in Japan, LB Bulgaricum Plc., Meiji Co., Ltd and the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
His pioneering research on the gut mycobiota defined the role of commensal fungi in innate mucosal and protective humoral immunity and provided the first evidence for mycobiota involvement in the pathophysiology of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). The laboratory develops and applies translational, experimental and computational approaches to study the role of immunity and microbiota early and later in life, upon therapeutic interventions and during conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, allergy, gastrointestinal cancers and immunodeficiencies, where fungi contribute to pathologies. Current effort in the laboratory, focused on the gut-bran axis and GI cancers, explores the neuro-modulatory and cancer-immunity modulating properties of the gut microbiota.