Welcome to the Preparatory Program Alumni Symposium

Since 2017 marks the 10th anniversary of the Preparatory Program in Stem Cell Biology, the Research School will organize an Alumni symposium open to all former Preparatory Program students and all current Stem Cell Center members. We are excited to hear three former Preparatory Program students, Laura Tarnawski, Roger Rönn, and Malin Åkerblom, present their research and give insights on how the Preparatory Program influenced their careers.

When and where?

November 3, 2017 at 13:00 - 16:30 in the Segerfalk Lecture Hall

Registration

The registration deadline is October 25, 2017.

Program

13:00 - 13:10

Welcome note

Henrik Ahlenius, Research School in Stem Cell Biology

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13:10 - 13:25

A brief history of the Preparatory Program in Stem Cell Biology

Anders Malmström, Director Research School in Stem Cell Biology 2006-2016

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13:30 – 14:00

From Stem Cells to Bioelectronic Medicine

Laura Tarnawski, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

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14:00 - 14:30

Coffee break

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14:30 - 15:00 

My Story – The Preparatory Program and my Career in Research

Roger Rönn, University of Edinburgh, UK

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15:00 - 15:30

Trace Reconstruction of Ancestral Cells by Enzymatic Recording

Malin Åkerblom, UCSF, San Francisco, USA

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15:30 - 17:00

Mingle and after work with finger food

BMC A10

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About the speakers

Laura Tarnawski

 

I am a postdoctoral researcher who is currently working at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm with Peder Olofsson. I started my career in Lund where I attended the Research School in Stem Cell Biology in 2010. I then continued to work on delineating surface markers for subset of cardiomyocytes and their use in cardiomyocyte isolation for downstream applications. Additionally, I helped re-purpose an established method for cellular reprogramming. Now I am working on how the nervous system can control aspects of human immunology and its connection to blood pressure regulation.

Roger Rönn

 

My name is Roger Rönn and I enrolled in the Preparatory Program in 2008. I started doing my PhD in Niels-Bjarne Woods laboratory 2009 and my project focus was blood development from human pluripotent stem cells in vitro. Being one of Bjarne’s first students I got to take part in setting up the routines in his lab, and I got the opportunity to visit the SALK institute in California where I got trained in key techniques for working with human pluripotent stem cells and blood differentiation. This allowed us to transfer this technology back to Lund, and our lab established the first human ES/iPS core facility in Sweden. On the 17th of December 2015, I defended my thesis ‘Towards Generation of Human Hematopoietic Stem Cells from Pluripotent Stem Cells’ and I had the honour of having professor George Q. Daley (Children’s Hospital in Boston) as my external opponent. I am currently doing my postdoc in Edinburgh (United Kingdom) where I continue working on blood development under the supervision of professor Elaine Dzierzak. My primary focus is investigating how low oxygen levels (hypoxia) and prevention of oxidative damage may be key requirements for the formation of hematopoietic stem cells, both during embryonic development and with in vitro systems.

Malin Åkerblom

 

I completed my PhD training at Lund University in the laboratory of Johan Jakobsson, where I worked at the intersection of novel RNA-based technologies and neurobiology, studying the role of miRNA in neurogenesis and cell specification. I became very interested in neural stem cells and in 2010 I was part of the Lund research school in stem cell biology. Since 2015 I have been working as a postdoc in the laboratory of Michael McManus at University of California, San Francisco. I’m passionate about stem cells, cell specification and to understand lineage relationships between cells in an organism. In the McManus lab I am developing a novel lineage-tracing tool where I’m using CRISPR to resolve developmental relationships between individual cells.