This news itemin the Cornell Chronicle is about: According to statistics, Cornell immunologist Avery August’s life journey has been an unlikely one. The son of a teenage mother from Belize who moved to the U.S. to give her children better opportunities, August grew up poor in tough neighborhoods of Los Angeles, only to work his way through graduate school at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and eventually into his current post as professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the College of Veterinary Medicine.