Prof. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte is currently a Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Director of the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona. Dr. Izpisua Belmonte’s area of research is focused on the understanding of stem cell biology, organ and tissue development and regeneration. He has uncovered the role of some homeobox genes in limb patterning and specification, as well as the identification of the molecular mechanisms that determine how the different cell type precursors of internal organs are organized spatially along the embryonic left right axis. During the last few years his work has focused on the molecular basis implicated during organ regeneration in higher vertebrates, the differentiation of human stem cells into various tissues, and the molecular basis underlying aging and somatic cell reprogramming.

Prof. George Q. Daley is the Samuel Lux Professor of Hematology/Oncology and the Director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Daley received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University, a Ph.D. in biology from MIT, and the M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academies, and has received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and the E. Donnall Thomas Prize from the American Society for Hematology.

Prof. Sheng Ding is currently William K. Bowes Jr. Distinguished Investigator and Professor at Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, and Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California San Francisco.  He obtained his B.S. in chemistry with honors from Caltech in 1999, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute in 2003. Before moving to Gladstone/UCSF in early 2011, Ding was an Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Chemistry at Scripps from 2003 to 2011. Dr. Ding has pioneered on developing and applying innovative chemical approaches to stem cell biology and regeneration, with a focus on discovering and characterizing novel small molecules that can control various cell fate/function, including stem cell maintenance, activation, differentiation and reprogramming in various developmental stages and tissues. Ding has published over 100 research articles, reviews and book chapters, and made several seminal contributions to the stem cell field. Ding is a cofounder of Fate Therapeutics and Stemgent.

Prof. Rudolf Jaenisch is Professor of Biology at the Whitehead Institute and the Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has generated the first transgenic mice carrying exogenous DNA in the germ line and was the first to use insertional mutagenesis for identifying genes crucial for embryonic development.  Perhaps his most fundamental contributions have been in the study of epigenetic processes during development.  In particularly he showed that methylation of DNA plays important roles in gene expression, imprinting and X-inactivation as well as in diseases such as cancer and mental retardation.  His work has focused on mammalian cloning and has defined some of the molecular mechanisms that are crucial for the nuclear reprogramming.  Most recently he is using direct reprogramming of somatic cells to generate “induced Pluripotent Stem” (iPS) cells in the culture dish. These cells are relevant to establish in vitro system to study major human diseases and eventually to derive cells that could be used for “customized” therapy.

Prof.  Hans Schöler received his PhD in 1985 from the Center for Molecular Biology in Heidelberg and subsequently held various group leader positions in research establishments in Germany, including the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg (1991-1999). He then served as Director of the Center for Animal Transgenesis and Germ Cell Research at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, United States (1991-2004). In 2004, he returned to Germany to accede to the post of Director of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster. His research focuses on the molecular biology of cells of the germline—i.e., pluripotent stem cells and germ cells. Over the past two decades, his laboratory has studied the interconversion of pluripotent stem cells, somatic cells, and diploid germ cells. The key player in genetic programs underlying pluripotency is the POU transcription factor Oct4—a protein discovered by Hans Schöler in the late 1980s. Hans Schöler was the first to show that mouse embryonic stem cells in vitro can differentiate into oocytes.

Prof. Azim Surani, born in Kenya received a PhD in 1975 at Cambridge University under Professor Sir Robert Edwards FRS (Nobel Laureate, 2010).  Surani joined the Babraham Institute in 1979, and discovered ‘Genomic Imprinting’ in 1984, and subsequently, novel imprinted genes and their functions, with contributions to its mechanism through establishment and erasure of DNA methylation.  In 1992, he was elected the Marshall-Walton Professor and subsequently, a Director of Research at Cambridge University. His recent work established the genetic basis for germ cell specification and epigenetic programming. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990, and awarded a Royal Medal in 2010.

Prof. Sally Temple, PhD, is the Co-Founder and Scientific  Director of the Neural Stem Cell Institute located in Rensselaer, NY, USA. Dr. Temple’s group is focused on studying neural stem cells, and using this knowledge to develop therapies for central nervous system (CNS) disorders.

A native of York, England, Dr. Temple received her undergraduate degree at Cambridge University, Cambridge UK, her PhD in optic nerve development from University College London, UK and completed her postdoctoral work on spinal cord development at Columbia University, NY USA.

In 1989, Dr. Temple discovered that the embryonic mammalian brain contained a rare, multipotent stem cell that could be extracted and grown in tissue culture to produce both neurons and glia. Her group has continued to make pioneering contributions to the field of neural stem cell research, identifying factors intrinsic to these cells as well as external signaling molecules from the niche that participate in their self-renewal and differentiation. Recently, she helped identify a novel, accessible adult human CNS stem cell in the retinal pigment epithelium, which offers the possibility of developing therapeutics for retinal disease.

Prof. Irving Weissman received his B.S. from Montana State University in 1960 and an MD from Stanford University in 1965.  During medical school he did research on thymus cell migration with James Gowans in 1964 at Oxford University, England.  He was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. H. S. Kaplan’s laboratory at Stanford University from 1965-1967, and was appointed as a Research Associate in the Department of Radiology upon completion of the fellowship.  He was appointed Assistant Professor of Pathology, Stanford School of Medicine in 1969, Associate Professor in 1974, and Professor in 1990.  He was an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1990-1992.

He was the Karel Beekhuis Professor of Cancer Biology from 1987 until 2005 and the Chair of the Immunology Program, a degree-granting program from 1986-2001. In 2002 he became Director of the Stanford Cancer/Stem Cell Institute, which was split into the Stanford Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and the Stanford Cancer Center in 2003; Weissman was Director of both, and was PI on the successful NCI Cancer Center grant. He stepped down as Cancer Center Director in 2008, but remains director of the Stem Cell Institute. In May 2005, he was named the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research.