Jan T. Vilcek, Professor of Microbiology at New York University School of Medicine in New York City; President and Co-founder, The Vilcek Foundation, New York, NY

Dr. Jan T. Vilcek is a biomedical scientist, educator, inventor and philanthropist. Dr. Vilcek and his wife Marica defected from communist Czechoslovakia and arrived in the United States in 1965 with all their possessions packed inside a pair of suitcases.

Dr. Vilcek is a Professor of Microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine. During his research career, Dr. Vilcek authored over 350 scientific publications, most of them concerned with the study of the regulation of the immune system by soluble protein mediators. Dr. Vilcek and NYU colleague Junming Le collaborated with the biotechnology company Centocor to create Remicade®, a potent anti-inflammatory agent used to treat over two million people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and other inflammatory disorders.

In 2000, Dr. Vilcek founded The Vilcek Foundation with his wife Marica Vilcek, an art historian who had worked for over thirty years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a curator and head of the museum’s Accessions and Catalogue Department.