Dennis Burton is the Chair and Professor in the Department of Immunology & Microbiology and holds the James & Jessie Minor Chair in Immunology. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Oxford University and his Ph.D. from Lund University, Sweden in physical biochemistry. He is the Scientific Director of the IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center, Director of The Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD) at Scripps Research, and a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, Boston, USA. He has held many research grants from the NIH and has published more than 450 papers in scientific journals.

He has received numerous awards including the Jenner Fellowship of the Lister Institute and a Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology. In 2023, in a list of Best Immunologists by Research.com, he placed 11th in the USA and 14th in the world. His research is focused on infectious disease, in particular the interplay of antibodies and highly mutable viruses, notably HIV. He is interested in the potential of broadly neutralizing antibodies to inform vaccine design.