- T. Grier Miller Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Ken Cadwell is the T. Grier Miller Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine and Director of the University of Pennsylvania Digestive and Liver Center. He received his BA from Northwestern University in 2002 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006, completing postdoctoral training at Washington University in St. Louis in the laboratory of Herbert Virgin, before joining the faculty at NYU and subsequently at Penn.
The Cadwell laboratory studies the interactions between the microbiota, including the bacterial and viral microbiome, and host innate immunity in shaping intestinal homeostasis and disease. His group’s foundational work on the autophagy gene ATG16L1 in Crohn’s disease established a paradigm for how genetic and environmental factors converge through innate immune pathways to drive inflammatory bowel disease.
Dr. Cadwell is one of the leading microbiome–immunity scientists in the world and a recent recruit to Penn, where he anchors gastrointestinal immunology within the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health and the Penn Colton Center for Autoimmunity. He partners broadly across gastroenterology, rheumatology, and dermatology to translate microbiome biology into therapeutic opportunities for immune-mediated disease.