Meet the Team

Mary Carrington, Ph.D. Director, Basic Science Program Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research

Mary Carrington is responsible for the guidance and oversight of a large, diverse group of scientists performing investigator-initiated, hypothesis-driven basic research in cancer and AIDS. She is also a senior principal scientist at the National Cancer Institute and heads the HLA Immunogenetics Laboratory in the Cancer and Inflammation Program. Her primary research interests focus on the role of host genetics in cancer, autoimmunity and infectious disease pathogenesis.

Carrington graduated from The University of Kansas with a B.S. in education, later obtaining her M.S. and Ph.D. in immunobiology from Iowa State University. She performed her postdoctoral studies in the Departments of Immunology and Microbiology at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, after which she joined the Immunology Department at Duke University as a faculty member. She moved to the National Cancer Institute in Frederick in 1989.

Jeffrey Lifson, M.D. Director, AIDS and Cancer Virus Program Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research

Jeffrey Lifson received his M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School in 1982, followed by residency and research fellowship training in the Department of Pathology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He became involved in AIDS-related research in 1983, playing a key role in establishing the first program in the United States to try to prevent transfusion-mediated transmission of AIDS through laboratory testing, while also conducting basic in vitro studies of AIDS pathogenesis. After several years of continuing research in AIDS pathogenesis while working in the biotechnology industry, Lifson moved to SAIC-Frederick, Inc. (renamed Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc. in September 2013) in 1995, establishing the Retroviral Pathogenesis Section within the AIDS Vaccine Program.

His work there has focused on the continuing development and application of quantitative virological and immunological methods for understanding retroviral pathogenesis and evaluating approaches for the prevention and treatment of retroviral infection and AIDS. In 2002, Lifson was named the director of the AIDS Vaccine Program, which became the AIDS and Cancer Virus Program in 2008. He is the principal investigator of the Retroviral Pathogenesis Section, and the head of Quantitative Molecular Diagnostics Core.