Dr Ian Parish is a Fundamental Immunologist with expertise in the negative regulation of T-cell function. He completed his PhD at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), during which he studied the cellular and molecular regulation of peripheral T-cell tolerance to better understand how autoimmunity is restrained by the immune system. He then accepted a postdoctoral position at the Yale School of Medicine, where he focused on T-cell differentiation during infection, and developed an interest in why T-cell responses become blunted during chronic viral infection. After returning to Australia, he established an independent research program at the ANU aimed at more broadly deciphering the molecular pathways that limit T cell function.

He joined the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2018 with the aim of applying his expertise to cancer immunotherapy, and in 2022 he was appointed as a Group Leader in the Cancer Immunology Program. His research group studies the fundamental biology of T-cell negative regulation in a range of contexts, with the goal of applying this knowledge to guide innovative immunotherapy approaches for the treatment of cancer. Since arriving at Peter Mac, he has secured over $5 million in research funding as a lead investigator through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), The Volkswagen Foundation, the Victorian Cancer Agency, mRNA Victoria and industry support. His research has collectively attracted over 3500 citations from publications featured in high impact journals such as JCI, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Immunity, Nature Medicine, Nature, Blood, JEM, Cell Reports, and Cancer Discovery.