Keynote and Invited Speakers

Keynote speakers:

• George Daley, Associate Director, Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston.  Dr. Daley has made a number of landmark discoveries in the mechanisms by which human embryonic stem (hES) cells differentiate into blood and germ cells, as well as in the regulation of hES cell self-renewal.
• Douglas Lauffenburger, Professor and Chair, Department of Biological Engineering, MIT.  Dr. Lauffenburger is the leader in the field of quantitative cell biology and systems biology, recently including the development of novel approaches to analyze complex signal transduction mechanisms.  He has been applying these approaches to several stem cell types, as well.
• Irving Weissman, Professor, Departments of Pathology and Developmental Biology, Stanford University.  Dr. Weissman has been a leader in the field of stem cells for over two decades.  His work in the field of hematopoietic stem cell biology helped shape the general view of the stem cell developmental hierarchy.

Additional invited, confirmed speakers:

• Mick Bhatia, McMaster University - human embryonic stem cells.
• Sangeeta Bhatia, MIT - high throughput screening technologies for stem cells.
• Christopher Chen, University of Pennsylvania - mechanics and the stem cell microenvironment.
• Sheng Ding, Scripps Research Institute - high-throughput small molecule screening technology.
• Dennis Discher, University of Pennsylvania - biomaterials and the stem cell microenvironment.
• Jennifer Elisseeff, Johns Hopkins University - biomaterials and tissue engineering.
• Fred Gage, Salk Institute - adult stem cell biology.
• Ram Mandalam, Cellerant Therapeutics - stem cell bioprocess development.
• Peter Zandstra, University of Toronto - stem cell systems biology.