The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Stem Cell Biology Seminars

Speaker(s)

Ali Brivanlou, Ph.D., Ali Brivanlou, Ph.D., Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Synthetic Embryology, The Rockefeller University

Speaker bio(s)

Dr. Ali H. Brivanlou is currently the Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Synthetic Embryology at Rockefeller. He received his doctoral degree in 1990 from the University of California, Berkeley and joined The Rockefeller University in 1994 as Assistant Professor after postdoctoral work in Douglas Melton's lab at Harvard University. Among his many awards are the Irma T. Hirschl/Monique Weill-Caulier Trusts Career Scientist Award, the Searle Scholar Award, the James A. Shannon Director's Award from the NIH, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The Brivanlou Laboratory aims to decipher the molecular circuitry that underlies the establishment of discrete cell fates during early human embryogenesis with a special emphasis on the development of the embryonic germ layers and the brain. His group discovered the molecular basis of embryonic induction for each germ layer and demonstrated that the human brain is induced by default based on an evolutionarily conserved molecular mechanism. In addition, Dr. Brivanlou’s laboratory derived and characterized both human embryonic stem cell (hESC) and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from both normal as well as diseased (Huntington) individuals. Three of his lines (RUES1, 2, and 3) became part of the NIH registry and are distributed nationally and internationally. In collaboration with Rockefeller physicist, Eric Siggia, he developed micropattern technology to standardize quantitative measurement of fate determination in hESCs and hiPSCs. They discovered that a simple confinement of colony architecture was sufficient to unveil a surprising self-organizing activity of human pluripotent cells. Disease-causing mutations change this pattern generating a unique signature when compared to their normal isogenic counterpart. His group has also applied their expertise in tissue engineering to the creation of 3D organoids, gastruloids, and neuruloids that represent highly reproducible in vitro models for the study of disease mechanisms during early development. In collaboration with Rockefeller virologist, Charles Rice, Dr. Brivanlou has used his robust micropattern technology to infect organoids with CMV, Rubella, and Zika virus, and more recently, the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19.

Open to

Tri-Institutional