Steven M. Holland, M.D.
Steven M. Holland serves as director of the Division of Intramural Research (DIR) at NIAID. Dr. Holland provides overall executive direction of the division’s basic and clinical research activities, which cover infectious diseases, immunology, and allergy. Dr. Holland also serves as the chief of the Immunopathogenesis Section within the Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology (LCIM).
DIR researchers currently conduct more than 180 clinical trials at the NIH Clinical Center and at collaborating domestic and international sites. The goal of the division’s research is to understand the mechanisms and pathophysiology of diseases so as to develop therapies, diagnostics, and vaccines that improve human health. DIR has efforts in many areas, including:
- Generating knowledge of the immune system in health and disease
- Defining mechanisms of abnormal immune function, such as primary and acquired immunodeficiencies, allergies, and autoimmunity
- Understand the biology of viruses, bacteria, mycobacteria, fungi, parasites and prions and the host responses to them
- Preventing, diagnosing, and treating immunologic, allergic, and infectious diseases
Dr. Holland received his B.A. from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He remained at Johns Hopkins for his internal medicine residency, chief residency, and fellowship in infectious diseases. His research areas of special interest have included Chronic Granulomatous Disease, Job's syndrome (autosomal dominant STAT3 deficiency) and the genetic conditions predisposing people to mycobacterial infections, including GATA2 deficiency. More recently, he has been interested in genetic conditions associated with severe coccidioidomycosis, sarcoidosis, and acquired forms of anticytokine autoimmunity predisposing to opportunistic infections.
Dr. Holland came to NIAID in 1989 as a National Research Council fellow in Dr. Sundararajan Venkatesan's section in the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, working on rev-mediated transcriptional regulation of HIV. In 1991, he joined Dr. John Gallin's section in the Laboratory of Host Defenses (LHD), shifting his research to the host side, with a focus on phagocyte defects and their associated infections. His work in the LHD centered on the pathogenesis and management of Chronic Granulomatous Disease, as well as other congenital immune defects affecting phagocytes. He was tenured in 2000 and became Chief of the Immunopathogenesis Section, which now resides within LCIM. In 2004, Dr. Holland became Chief of the newly created Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases, a position he held until becoming director, DIR in 2016.
Dr. Holland is the author of more than 800 publications and has been named an NIH Distinguished Investigator. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received the American College of Physicians Award for Science, the Boyle Scientific Achievement Award of the Immune Deficiency Foundation, the American Society for Microbiology Abbott Award, the Erwin Neter Award of the Association of Medical Laboratory Immunologists, the NIH Distinguished Clinical Teacher Award, and the Walter E. Stamm Mentoring Award of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, among other awards.