Dr. Abbe de Vallejo is tenured Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Immunology at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Associate Professor in Rheumatology at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. He serves as Director of the Flow Cytometry Facility at John G Rangos Sr Research Center, and an affiliated investigator of the Pittsburgh Claude Pepper Older Americans Independence Center. His research on the Immunobiology of Aging provided the molecular basis for the irreversible loss of CD28, thereby validating CD28^null T cells as unique biomarkers of the aging immune system in humans. Dr. de Vallejo advocates for a research paradigm shift from the usual young-versus-old comparisons, to the analysis of defined populations of older adults. It is a research strategy he is employing to study how immunity is linked to the maintenance of physical and cognitive domains of function in successful aging. Dr. de Vallejo has a complementary research on the Biology of Inflammatory Syndromes. In contrast to the self-antigen paradigm of autoimmunity, his research program is the first to provide evidence for the role of premature senescence of T cells in the pathophysiology of juvenile arthritis. He is investigating immunopathways driven by such prematurely senescent immune cells, and how they could be exploited for immunomodulation. Dr. de Vallejo is recipient of the Julie Martin Mid-career Award on Aging from the American Federation for Aging Research. He is a member of the American Association of Immunologists, the American College of Rheumatology, and the Gerontological Society of America, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.