In this video, Evangelos Kiskinis discusses his lab’s work using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells to study pediatric epilepsy.

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Evangelos Kiskinis, PhD

Evangelos Kiskinis is an assistant professor of neurology and physiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, where he also serves as scientific director of the Stem Cell Core Facility and codirector of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Initiative. His laboratory harnesses the power of human pluripotent stem cells to study neuronal development as well as to understand how neuronal function is impaired as a result of injury or disease. The overarching goal of his research is to identify points of targeted and effective therapeutic intervention for epilepsy and ALS. He earned his PhD from Imperial College London and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.

In this video, Shan Bian discusses his postdoctoral work using cerebral organoids to study brain tumors.

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Shan Bian, PhD

Shan Bian is a professor of stem cells and neuroscience in the School of Life Sciences and Technology at Tongji University, in Shanghai, China. Bian's research focuses on the study of human brain development, disorders, and tumors using a brain organoid model system. He earned his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Freiburg, in Germany, and completed his postdoctoral training at the Weill Cornell Medical College and Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

In this video, Kosuke Funato and Ryan C. Smith discuss their use of stem cell models to study mutation in pediatric brain tumors.

Speakers

Kosuke Funato, PhD

Kosuke Funato is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Viviane Tabar at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His work uses human embryonic stem cells as a model system to dissect the oncogenic role of histone mutations found in pediatric high-grade glioma. He earned his PhD in biophysics and biochemistry from the University of Tokyo.

Ryan Smith

Ryan Smith is a doctoral student in the Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, working under the mentorship of Viviane Tabar. His research focuses on the study of neurodevelopmental regulation of pediatric brain tumor formation using human pluripotent stem cells. He earned his bachelor’s degrees in neuroscience and behavior and in French studies from Wesleyan University.

In this video, Faranak Fattahi discusses her lab’s use of human pluripotent stem cells to study the cell types and diseases of the enteric nervous system.

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Faranak Fattahi, PhD

Faranak Fattahi is a Sandler Faculty Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, where she uses human pluripotent stem cells to develop models of peripheral nervous system development and function. Her laboratory uses these models to define disease mechanisms and identify new therapeutic targets for peripheral neuropathies. She completed her graduate training in the laboratory of Lorenz Studer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

In this video, Pedro Rifes discusses his research using human embryonic stem cells to study the early development of the brain.

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Pedro Rifes, PhD

Pedro Rifes is an assistant professor in the human neural development lab in the Novo Nordisk Center for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark. He previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lund, in Sweden. His research focuses on the earliest patterning steps during the embryonic development of the human brain, particularly the rostral-caudal axis, using human pluripotent stem cells and microfluidic culturing techniques. He earned his PhD in developmental biology from the University of Lisbon, in Portugal.

In this video, Hiroko Nobuta discusses her work using patient-derived stem cells to research Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease and potential future treatments.

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Hiroko Nobuta, PhD

Hiroko Nobuta is a postdoctoral fellow in the neuroscience department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She completed training in oligodendrocyte biology with her PhD mentor James Waschek, at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as her postdoctoral mentors David Rowitch, at the University of California, San Francisco, and Marius Wernig, at Stanford University. She is now exploring gene engineering methods to manipulate glia cells to treat neurodegenerative disorders.

In this video, Fred Etoc discusses his research using organoids to study the developing brain.

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Fred Etoc, PhD

Fred Etoc is chief scientific officer at RUMI Scientific, where his team is developing human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-based tissue-scale models to use in drug discovery for Huntington disease and neurodevelopmental disorders. He trained as a chemist at the École normale supérieure, in Paris, before developing an interest in biology and biophysics and joining the laboratories of Ali Brivanlou and Eric Siggia as a postdoc, working to create self-organized hESC assemblies mimicking early human embryos at gastrulation stages. He is currently working to quantitatively and reproducibly model normal and pathological early neural development, combining micro-fabrication, imaging, and artificial intelligence.

In this video, Iva Kelava discusses her research using organoids to model the developing human brain.

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Iva Kelava, PhD

Iva Kelava is a postdoc in the lab of Madeline Lancaster at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom. She earned her master’s in ecology from the University of Zagreb, in Croatia, before earning her PhD and going on to study mammalian brain development and evolution as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany. Her current work is centered around brain organoids, which she uses to study human brain development and neurodevelopmental diseases.