Awen Gallimore is a professor within the Division of Infection Immunity and Co-Director of Systems Immunity Research Institute at Cardiff University. She gained a DPhil in Professor Andrew McMichael’s laboratory in Oxford, studying the immune response to simian and human immunodeficiency viruses. With a Wellcome Trust travelling fellowship, she subsequently moved to the laboratory of Professor Rolf Zinkernagel to further study factors important for anti-viral immunity. She established her laboratory in the Nuffield Department of Medicine in Oxford to look at ways of persuading the immune system to recognise cancer. Awen moved to Cardiff in 2002 and shortly afterwards gained a senior fellowship from the MRC to expand the lab. The Cardiff lab, which currently receives funding from Cancer Research UK, Cancer Research Wales, Breast Cancer Now and The Wellcome Trust takes basic research using model systems of cancer through to testing novel immunotherapies in patients with cancer.