Professor Richard Kitching is a Nephrologist physician-scientist who has made sustained and important contributions to our understanding of kidney disease. These include defining the roles of T lymphocytes and their subsets in mediating kidney injury, and the protective role of regulatory T cells in immune kidney disease. He has defined key parts of molecules that cause renal and systemic autoimmune diseases, establishing a framework for more specific therapies. His work has recently moved beyond immune kidney disease to answer a fundamental question in the biology of HLA and antigen recognition, with implications for both the understanding and future treatment of diseases.