The Japan Prize Foundation has announced Max D. Cooper, MD, as a laureate of the 2018 Japan Prize. Cooper will receive a certificate of recognition, a commemorative gold medal and a cash award of approximately $220,000.

The Japan Prize is awarded to scientists and researchers, regardless of nationality, who have made significant contributions to the progress of science and technology, as well as society.

Cooper is a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in developmental immunology.

He also is a member of the Emory Vaccine Center, the Emory Center for AIDS Research and the Winship Cancer Institute. 

Cooper is being honored for deciphering the two types of lymphocyte lineages involved in adaptive immunity, laying the conceptual groundwork for our understanding of nearly all fields touched by immunology.

Cooper is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a former president of the American Association of Immunologists. In 2017, he was elected to the Académie des Sciences of the Institut de France and to the Royal Society of London.