David A. Braun, MD, PhD is a physician-scientist dedicated to improving our understanding and treatment of renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Dr. Braun is the principal investigator of a laboratory focused on cancer immunotherapies and RCC at the Yale Cancer Center, the Goodman and Gilman Yale Scholar and Assistant Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Urology at the Yale School of Medicine, and a medical oncologist specializing in the care of patients with RCC. He received his undergraduate degree in molecular biology from Princeton University, his medical degree from Mount Sinai, and his doctoral degree in computational biology from New York University. During his graduate studies, Dr. Braun also served as President of the American Physician Scientists Association (APSA). He completed his internal medicine residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (where he also served as Chief Resident) and his medical oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Braun’s laboratory utilizes computational and functional immunology approaches to dissect the immunobiology of RCC. His work has uncovered an interplay between somatic alterations and immune infiltration that influences immunotherapy response, has identified a therapeutically targetable “immune dysfunction circuit” between terminally exhausted CD8+ T cells and immunosuppressive macrophages in advanced RCC, and has broadly identified key determinants of anti-tumor immunity and therapeutic response. Dr. Braun's ultimate goal is to translate his laboratory findings into novel immunotherapeutic approaches, and he is a principal investigator or co-investigator for multiple phase I and II trials.