2010 Election Results

Dr. Shinya Yamanaka is Director of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University.

Dr. Yamanaka received his M.D. from Kobe University in 1987 and his Ph.D. from Osaka City University in 1993. From 1987 to 1989 he was a resident at the National Osaka Hospital. Dr. Yamanaka spent the period from 1993 to 1996 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco where he served as a post-doctoral fellow with the aim of obtaining further research skill and practical field experience, he was particularly interested in production technology of knockout mouse and transgenic mouse. During his stay at the Gladstone Institute, he discovered NAT 1, which later recognized as an indispensable gene in differentiation of ES cell. Dr. Yamanaka returned to Osaka City University Medical School to take an assistant professor position in 1996, and was then appointed as an associate professor at Nara Institute of Science and Technology in 1999, where he became a full professor in 2003. He moved on to take up his current position as a professor in Kyoto University in 2004. At the same time, he received an appointment as a visiting scientist at the Gladstone Institute in 2007. Having successfully established induced pluripotent stem cell or iPS cell, Dr. Yamanaka was appointed as Director for CiRA, Center for iPS Cell Research and Application at Kyoto University in 2008. He now has actively conducting iPS cell research with two dozens of researchers and students toward regenerative medicine.

Owing to his prominent deeds and discoveries, Dr. Yamanaka has received several awards including "JSPS Prize, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science" and "Asahi Award 2007, Asahi Newspaper Co." in 2007; "The Special Prize for Science and Technology, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan)", "Chunichi Cultural Prize, Chunichi Newspaper Co. (Japan)", "The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine (Hong Kong)", "A Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon 2008 (Japan)", "Robert-Koch Preis 2008" in 2008; "Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award" and "Canada Gairdner InternationalAward" in 2009.

Statement on ISSCR

"Important roles of ISSCR are to provide the latest and hottest scientific findings through its annual meetings and to serve as a world opinion leader in stem cell research, application, ethics, and policy. I hope to advance all of these roles of ISSCR. In particular, I would like to encourage authors to present unpublished results at annual meetings and to promote internationality of ISSCR."

Thomas Graf coordinates the Differentiation and Cancer Programme at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain since October 2006.

Prior to that, Dr. Graf worked at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He is interested in how hematopoietic stem cells differentiate into specialized cells, and in particular, what role transcription factors play in this process. He has shown that single transcription factors can reprogram committed B and T lymphocytes into macrophages (and dendritic cells) at very high frequencies. Dr. Graf is now studying the transition from pre B cells to macrophages at the epigenetic level to learn general principles about how already specified cells can be reprogrammed to acquire new fates. These basic studies should aid in the generation of cells 'a la carte' without the need of pluripotent stem cell formation.

Derek van der Kooy is Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Toronto. From 1991 until 2002, he served as Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Toronto.

Dr. van der Kooy received a M.Sc. in Psychology at the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D in Anatomy, first at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and finishing in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Toronto. Dr. van der Kooy gained postdoctoral research experience at Cambridge University in England and at the Salk Institute in California.

The van der Kooy lab works on various stem cell biology and developmental biology research projects. The lab has helped to characterize the properties and molecular control of adult and embryonic brain neural stem cells, and in collaboration with the lab of Sam Weiss, first localized adult mammalian neural stem cells to the ventricular lining of the brain. The lab now works on stem cells in organisms from Drosophila to humans. Of note, Dr. van der Kooy's lab produced the first report of stem cells in the adult mammalian eye, published in 2000 in Science. Dr. van der Kooy’s lab also has isolated a rare stem cell from the adult mouse and human pancreas that can show extensive proliferation under completely defined conditions in vitro. His lab continues to investigate the nature of various stem cells, and in particular, the lineage of neural stem cells from pluripotent embryonic stem cells, with particular relevance to the origin of the earliest neural stem cell in the developing embryo.

Hans Clevers is Professor of Molecular Genetics and Director of the Hubrecht Institute. Dr. Clevers obtained his MD degree in 1984 and his PhD degree in 1985 from the University Utrecht, the Netherlands. His postdoctoral work (1986-1989) was done with Cox Terhorst at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of the Harvard University, Boston, USA. From 1991-2002 Dr. Clevers was Professor in Immunology at the University Utrecht and, since 2002, Professor in Molecular Genetics. Since 2002, he is Director of the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht.

Dr. Clevers has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2000 and is the recipient of several awards, including the Dutch Spinoza Award in 2001, the Swiss Louis Jeantet Prize in 2004, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Katharine Berkan Judd Award in 2005, the Israeli Rabbi Shai Shacknai Memorial Prize in 2006, and the Dutch Josephine Nefkens Prize for Cancer Research and the German Meyenburg Cancer Research Award in 2008. He obtained an ERC Advanced Investigator grant in 2008. He is Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur since 2005.

Hongkui Deng, PhD is a Professor of Cell Biology at Peking University and Associate Director of Chemical Genomics Laboratory at Peking University. Dr. Deng’s laboratory works on cellular reprogramming, and directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into functional hepatocytes and insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells.

Prior to Peking University, Dr. Deng was the Director of Molecular Biology at Viacell Inc working on ex vivo expansion of human hematopoietic stem cells. From 1995 to 1997 he was an Aaron Diamond Postdoctoral fellow with Dan R. Littman at the NYU School of Medicine’s Skirball Institute, where he identified major co-receptors for HIV entry into cells. He obtained his PhD of Immunology in 1995 from University of California, Los Angeles, where he worked with Eli Sercarz on the function of histocompatibility molecules in antigen presentation.

Amy J. Wagers, PhD directs a research laboratory at Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Stem Cell Institute that focuses on defining the factors and mechanisms regulating the migration, expansion, and regenerative potential of blood-forming and muscle-forming stem cells.

Her lab employs sensitive cell sorting approaches for direct assessment of stem cell phenotype and function, and to develop surrogate in vitro assays that faithfully reflect stem cell potential. Dr. Wagers is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University and an Investigator in the Section on Developmental and Stem Cell Biology at Joslin Diabetes Center.  She is a Principal Faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and serves on its Executive Committee.  Dr. Wagers is a recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award, the WM Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholar Award, the NIH Innovator Award, and an Early Career Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.