The Human Vaccines Project
Decoding the Human Immune System
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
The Newborn Immunity Initiative
Globally, each year 3 million children are born stillborn, another 15 million babies are born dangerously pre-term, and 800,000 newborns die from infection. The Newborn Immunity Initiative will reduce infant mortality by determining the functional molecular drivers of maternal-fetal immune interactions. The Newborn Immunity Initiative aims to identify how the maternal immune baseline predicts the immune trajectory of a mother's offspring and the accompanying risk for stillbirth, neonatal and infant infections, and the neonatal and infant vaccine response. In conjunction with this, the Newborn Immunity Initiative will also examine how currently licensed vaccines given to the mother affect the immune trajectory of her offspring. This initiative brings together partners at the Telethon Kids Institute, Université Libre in Brussels, and Cincinnati Children's Hospital.
The Human Immunomics Initiative
The Human Immunomics Initiative (HII) is a joint initiative partnering the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Human Vaccines Project to create the world’s premier immunology initiative that aims to revolutionize the understanding of the human immune system and accelerate the creation of effective vaccines, with a specific focus on aging populations. The HII will merge large-scale cohort studies with advances in systems biology, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence (AI) to determine the rules of engagement for effective immunity in aging populations aiming to answer core questions of aging such as: Why do some people get disease as they age, while others do not? And how do we engineer aging immune systems to better fight disease?
The COVID Vaccine Initiative
The COVID Vaccine Initiative (CVI) aims to ensure the development of safe, effective, and accessible vaccines for those most vulnerable to COVID-19: aging populations and those living in low- and middle-income countries. It leverages HVP’s global clinical research consortium, including collaborations with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health focused on deciphering effective immunity in aging populations; FHI 360, a global nonprofit research and human development organization with extensive experience working in low and middle-income countries; and the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, a global leader in addressing public health preparedness and emerging infectious disease response. The CVI will facilitate efforts of the global community to efficiently generate key information critical to accelerating development of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 while providing a global blueprint for future pandemic preparedness for emerging infectious diseases.
Where we work
External reviews

Our Sustainable Development Goals
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Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
At the Human Vaccines Project, we aim to transform the future of human health by decoding the human immune system. By gaining a complete understanding of the immune system, we can more effectively and expeditiously fight both non-communicable and infectious diseases - accelerating the development of vaccines, treatments, and therapies for all people.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
In the past decades, huge advances in genomics and bioinformatics make it now possible to decode the human immune system for the first time. Our scientific plan focuses on two areas:
1. Understanding the rules and components of immunity
2. Creating AI-driven models of immunity
Through numerous initiatives, studies, and partnerships focused on examining different aspects of human immunity, we seek to understand the immune system as a whole and harness its extraordinary disease-fighting power.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
By creating the world’s largest immunology-based research network we have the ability to foster research and collaboration among leading scientists, institutions, and governments around the globe. Through our global consortium we enable leading researchers and scientists around the world to work together in designing, implementing, and analyzing outputs from scientific studies. We also partner with leading academic institutions to study specific aspects of immunity and ensure comprehensive data analytics and management.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
In the first three years, we have open-sourced the first sequencing of the human immune system, used machine learning to predict who will and will not respond to vaccination, and established one of the world's leading scientific consortiums and immunology-based research networks. Our network has published several peer-reviewed publications in high-profile journals, and we’ve made our data publicly available for additional research.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
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The Human Vaccines Project
Board of directorsas of 02/22/2022
Ian Gust
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center.
Leadership
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Disability
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