# Garry Nolan

Garry P. Nolan (born c. 1961) is a British-American immunologist, academic, inventor, and business executive. He holds the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor Endowed Chair in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Nolan founded biotechnology companies, and wrote numerous medical research papers. Since 2022, most of his public appearances have been related to his support for ufology and his belief that extraterrestrial intelligence has visited or resides on Earth.

## Education

Nolan graduated in 1983 from Cornell University with a BS degree in biology with a specialization in genetics. In 1989, he received his PhD in genetics from Stanford University under Leonard Herzenberg before doing post-doctoral work with Nobel laureate David Baltimore at MIT, where he co-developed the 293T-based rapid retroviral production system and the cloning of the NF-κB p65/ RelA DNA regulatory factor.

## Research

His areas of research include autoimmunity and inflammation, cancer and leukemia, hematopoiesis, and using computation for network and systems immunology. He is perhaps best known for his early work in the Baltimore lab at the Whitehead Institute, where he worked on developing 293T cell rapid retroviral production for gene therapy. Nearly all gene therapy using retroviruses or lentiviruses is done using 293-based cell lines per the rapid retroviral protocol. He also developed cloning of the RELA transcription factor, a key regulator in immune response genes and a principal cellular component that HIV uses to replicate itself. Other major projects on which he has worked include phospho-flow signaling development (now licensed to Becton-Dickinson), FACS-gal (owned by Thermo Fisher), CyTOF multiparameter analysis, split-poll based Quantum Barcoding Technology (owned by ScaleBio), algorithmic approaches to analyzing complex single-cell datasets, proof that the NFAT transcription factor is both a REL protein and a key determinant in HIV replication, and development of multiplexing technologies for tissue analysis, such as MIBI and CODEX, and the algorithmic approaches needed to understand them. As of 2022, his lab works on several FDA-supported projects for Ebola, influenza, Zika virus, and COVID-19, as well as continuing Nolan's immune-tumor interface in many human cancers.

## Companies

In 1996, Nolan founded the biotechnology company Rigel, Inc. with colleagues Donald Payan, James Gower, Thomas Raffin, and Ronald Garren in South San Francisco. In 2003, he established the biotech company Nodality, Inc., which develops "personalized tests for cancer and autoimmune diseases." Big data company BINA Technology was founded in 2010 and bought out by Roche in 2014 for $107 million. In 2011, he founded Apprise, which focused on cell analysis using split-pool technology. Nolan later sold Apprise to Roche, with whom he co-founded another startup, Scale Bio, which also focuses on split-pool technology. Along with three postdoctoral researchers, Sean Bendall, Michael Angelo, and Harris Feinberg, Nolan founded Ionpath in 2014. This company is active in spatial proteomics. In 2015, with postdocs Yury Goltsev and Nikolay Samusik, he founded Akoya Biosciences, which commercializes Nolan's co-Detection by indexing (CODEX) technology.

## Ufology and belief in extraterrestrial contact

Starting in 2012, Nolan promoted his investigations of the Atacama skeleton, a corpse from Chile that ufologists had speculated to be of alien origin, but which he later revealed to be a mummified human stillbirth with genetic bone defects and gene mutation causing deformity.
According to Nolan, he was approached by "some people representing the government and an aerospace corporation to help them understand the medical harm that had come to some individuals, related to supposed interactions with an anomalous craft" because "they were interested in the kinds of blood analysis that my lab can do".
Nolan has made extensive claims in conjunction with other ufologists about supposed materials associated with UFOs. In August 2022, Nolan appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight show and discussed his claims of UAP-related research in an hour-long interview. During a May 2023 SALT iConnections conference in Manhattan for an interview with Alex Klokus titled "The Pentagon, Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Crashed UFOs", Nolan claimed that some governments have retrieved artifacts from extraterrestrial craft, said that he gives the probability as "100 percent" that extraterrestrials have not only visited Earth but have been visiting earth for a long time, and speculated that what has visited Earth are simply "emissaries" and possibly drones. As New York Times columnist Ezra Klein interviewed journalist and UFO author Leslie Kean in June 2023, Kean told Klein that Nolan "knows David Grusch very well and vouches for him".
Nolan co-founded The Sol Foundation with sociocultural anthropologist Peter Skafish on August 15, 2023.

## Awards and honors

* National Science Foundation Fellowship (1988)
* National Institutes of Health Fellowship (1990-1992)
* Burroughs Wellcome Fund New Investigator Award (1996)
* United States Department of Defense Teal Innovator Award (2012)