About the Editors
Like the other Nature titles, Nature Medicine has no external editorial board. Instead, all editorial decisions are made by a dedicated team of professional editors, with relevant research and editorial backgrounds.
Chief Editor: João Monteiro
João received his medical training at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he also earned a PhD degree, studying mechanisms of tolerance to self-antigens in autoimmune diseases. In 2009, he was named a Pew Latin American Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences, moving to the United States to pursue studies on T cell antigen recognition and in vivo dynamics of the immune responses with Ron Germain, at the National Institutes of Health. João was the senior editor for immunology and translational medicine at Cell from 2013-2017 and in December, 2017, he was appointed Chief Editor of Nature Medicine, where he leads a team of editors and journalists covering news, opinion and research across the entire landscape of translational and clinical research. He has given talks about medicine, science and publishing in many international conferences, and has championed efforts to raise ethical standards and transparency in the reporting of translational and clinical research. João cares about supporting young investigators, creating opportunities to make scientific publishing more inclusive, and harnessing the potential of scientific research to reduce health inequalities globally. Since 2021, he has served as a member of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). João is based in New York and you can follow him on Twitter @JMinImmunoland.
Deputy Editor: Jennifer Sargent
Jennifer completed her undergraduate degree in biochemistry at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Prior to her doctoral work, Jennifer studied signal transduction systems in P. aeruginosa with Joanne Engel at the University of California, San Francisco, USA. She received her PhD from Dartmouth College for her studies on transcriptomics and genetics of scleroderma in Michael Whitfield’s lab. Jennifer did her postdoctoral work with Juan Rivera at the National Institutes of Health, USA, investigating sphingolipid signalling in allergy and autoimmunity. Jennifer has been serving the clinical and scientific communities as a professional editor since 2014. She was an editor at Nature Reviews Endocrinology before moving to The Lancet in 2015. In 2019, she joined the team at Nature Medicine, and became Deputy Editor in 2022. Jennifer handles research manuscripts in the areas of cardiometabolism, reproductive medicine and public health. She is based in the London office and you can follow her on Twitter @JenLSargent.
Deputy Editor: Saheli Sadanand
Saheli received her undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale College. She then joined the Yale Department of Immunobiology, where she studied flu-specific memory B cells. After obtaining her Ph.D., she investigated the programming and maintenance of isotype-specific B cells in HIV-infected patients as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Galit Alter at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. Saheli began her editorial career as Locum Associate Editor at Nature Biotechnology in 2018, joined Nature Medicine in 2019 and was appointed Deputy Editor in 2022. Saheli handles papers related to immunology, rheumatologic diseases and immunotherapies, including cancer immunotherapies. She is based in the New York office and can be followed on Twitter @SaheliSadanand.
Senior Editor, Magazine: Ben Johnson
Ben trained as a virologist, starting with an undergraduate degree in virology from the University of Warwick, UK. His PhD, in influenza virus genetics and immunoevasion, was from Public Health England and the University of Reading, UK, with Maria Zambon and Wendy Barclay, and included a brief stint with Malik Peiris at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests then moved to smallpox vaccines, viral ion channels and cell adhesion, while he was a postdoc at Imperial College London with Geoffrey Smith, FRS. Ben then joined open-access publisher BioMed Central in 2011 as an editor and then associate publisher and was Head of Communities & Engagement at Springer Nature from 2016, running the Nature Research Communities and other online-engagement activities for researchers. Ben joined Nature Medicine in 2021, with responsibility for news and opinion content, and is based in the London office. You can follow him on Twitter @drbenjohnson.
Senior Editor, Research Analysis: Karen O'Leary
Karen received her undergraduate degree in microbiology from University College Cork, followed by an MSc in biomedical science from Edinburgh Napier University. She then joined the University of Cambridge Department of Haematology as a research assistant, before moving to the University of Sussex to pursue her doctoral studies on lung cancer epigenetics with Peter Schmid. Karen then worked as a postdoc with Sharon Glynn at the National University of Ireland, Galway, studying the interaction of prostate cancer cells and stromal cells, before going on to expand her knowledge of translational and clinical science while working as a writer at a medical communications agency. Karen joined Nature Reviews Cancer as a Locum Associate Editor in 2020, and joined Nature Medicine in 2021, where she oversees research analysis content, including Reviews, Perspectives, News & Views and Research Highlights. She is based in the London office.
Senior Editor, Research Manuscripts: Michael Basson
As a graduate student in Jasper Rine's laboratory at University of California at Berkeley, Michael studied the sterol biosynthetic pathway and its rate-limiting enzyme HMG-CoA reductase in baker's yeast. His postdoctoral work was on developmental genetics and microRNAs with Robert Horvitz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then worked in the biotech industry, first on the use of model organisms for drug discovery and then on tumor angiogenesis. Michael currently handles research manuscripts in the fields of cardiovascular diseases, precision medicine & big data, and bioengineering & biotechnology. He joined Nature Medicine in 2003 and is based in the New York office.
Senior Editor, Research Manuscripts: Alison Farrell
Alison Farrell pursued her undergraduate degree in microbiology and immunology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, where she studied cell cycle regulation in the laboratory of David O. Morgan. Alison subsequently joined LeukoSite in Cambridge, MA as a postdoctoral fellow. She did a second post-doctoral stint at Harvard Medical School before joining Nature Medicine in 2001. Alison is located in the San Francisco office. She handles research on infectious diseases, vaccines and microbiome.
Senior Editor, Research Manuscripts: Jerome Staal
Jerome completed his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at the University of Tasmania, Australia, and continued to study the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying neuronal degeneration after traumatic brain injury for his doctoral work. After obtaining his PhD, he went on to study neuron–glia interactions during development and in disease at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and, subsequently, at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne, Australia. Jerome joined Nature Communications as an Associate Editor in 2018 before joining Nature Medicine in 2020. Jerome handles papers in the areas of neurology, psychiatry and regenerative medicine, including stem cells. He is based in the New York office.
Senior Editor, Research Manuscripts: Ulrike Harjes
Ulrike completed her undergraduate degree in molecular medicine at the University of Göttingen, GER, before focusing her postgraduate studies on cancer biology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL. Her doctoral work was on Notch signalling in endothelial cell metabolism and tumour angiogenesis, with Adrian Harris and Barbara Fielding at the University of Oxford, UK. After her postdoctoral work with Adrian Harris and then in Peter Carmeliet’s laboratory at KU Leuven, BE, researching vascular metabolism in the context of cancer and diabetes, she joined Nature Reviews Cancer as an Associate Editor in 2017. As a Senior Editor, Ulrike moved to Nature Medicine in 2022. She handles papers in cancer and immunology and is based in the Berlin office. You can follow her on Twitter @UlrikeHarjes.
Senior Editor, Research Manuscripts: Anna Ranzoni
Anna completed her undergraduate studies in biology at the University of Milan, followed by a master’s degree in genetics at the University of Pavia in Italy. She then pursued her PhD at University College London, where she studied human amniotic fluid stem cells and their therapeutic potential for brittle bone disease. Anna continued her research as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Ana Cvejic at the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, working on the characterization of human blood stem cells during prenatal development by single-cell genomics methods. Anna joined Nature Medicine in 2020, and she handles papers on genetics, genomics, cell therapy and gene therapy. She is based in the London office.
Senior Editor, Research Manuscripts: Lorenzo Righetto
Lor
enzo studied Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, but was then involved in research in infectious diseases modelling during his PhD at EPFL, in Andrea Rinaldo’s group. He was also a postdoc at Politecnico di Milano (with Marino Gatto and Renato Casagrandi) and Human Technopole (with Fabio Pammolli), where he also worked more broadly in areas related to data science and healthcare, with a focus on pharmaceutical R&D. He joined Nature Communications as their digital medicine editor in January 2020 and has taken the same role at Nature Medicine, starting in December 2022. He is based in the London office.
Associate Editor, Research Manuscripts: Ming Yang
Ming completed his Undergraduate degree in Physiology at King’s College London, followed by a Master’s degree in Pharmacology at University of Bristol. He completed his PhD and Postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge where he investigated the effects of metformin in the gastrointestinal tract and the functions of enteroendocrine cells in the context of metabolic diseases. During his PhD, he did a secondment at Science magazine and Science Translational Medicine. Ming was an editor in BMC Medicine in 2020 before joining Nature Medicine in March 2022, handling papers in the areas of non-communicable diseases and public health. He is based in the London office.
