Lawrence J. Stern is Associate Professor of Pathology at the University of Massachusetts  Medical School, where he has been since September 2002.  Previously he was  the Pfizer Inc.-Gerald D. Laubach Associate Professor of Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1994-2002). His current research interests are in the molecular mechanisms of recognition and response in the immune system, the biochemistry of antigen processing pathways, and structure-function studies of proteins involved in signal transduction. Dr. Stern did post-doctoral work with Don Wiley at Harvard University, investigating the three-dimensional structure and peptide binding mechanism of class II MHC proteins. He earned the Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1989 from MIT, investigating the proton-pumping mechanism of bacteriorhodopsin with H. Gobind Khorana. He earned the B.A. cum laude in Chemistry in 1983 from Cornell University, where he trained with L. Que, Jr.