Dr. Nagy received his M.D. in 1991 and a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology in 1995, both from the University Medical School of Debrecen in Hungary. He did postdoctoral work in the United States with Peter Davies at the University of Texas–Houston, where he holds the title of adjunct professor, and later at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies with Ron Evans. In 1999, he received a Boehringer Ingelheim Research Award, which enabled him to return to Hungary. Dr. Nagy was elected EMBO Young Investigator in 2000 and has held a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences since 2004. He is currently professor and head of the Debrecen Clinical Genomics Center in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Debrecen, Medical and Health Science Center. Dr. Nagy is the recipient of HHMI international research scholar awards through both the Parasitology initiative and the Baltics, Central Europe, and Russia initiative.

László Nagy is using molecular, pharmacologic, and genetic approaches to delineate the pathways regulated by nuclear hormone receptors. These transcription factors play key lipid-handling roles in macrophages and dendritic cells, immune-system cells that control immunity and inflammation. He plans to use targeted elimination of some of these receptors (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors, PPARs) from mouse macrophages and dendritic cells to determine their effects on models of infectious and chronic inflammatory diseases.