Ruland is currently a professor and director of the Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Pathobiochemistry at the Technical University of Munich School of Medicine. Previously, he worked at the Ontario Cancer Institute and the AMGEN Research Institute at the University of Toronto with Tak Mak. Recently, he was awarded the Leibniz Prize for his outstanding work in the field of immunology.

Ruland’s research focuses on the molecular pathogenesis of lymphomas, investigating how immune cells recognise pathogens and initiate immune defence, and how deregulated signals in blood cells lead to the development of cancer. His accomplishments include the identification of Bcl-10 and Mucosa-Associated Lymphoid Tissue Lymphoma Translocation 1 (MALT-1) as mediators of the signalling pathways leading from T- and B-cell antigen receptor engagement to NFκB, as well as the identification of the inhibitory receptor PD-1 as a key tumour suppressor in T-cell lymphoma, which has implications for PD-1 checkpoint inhibition in the clinic.