Prof Ariel Ruiz i Altaba is Coordinator of the EU-funded research project HEALING, was founding director of the Swiss Stem Cell Network and is professor at the Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, Université de Genève, Switzerland. He is also an established visual artist. Emma Kemp met Ariel to hear more about science, art and how they might come together to build an understanding of the evolving world around us.

Dr Allen Eaves founded the Terry Fox Laboratory for Haematology and Oncology Research with his wife Dr Connie Eaves and was the lab’s Director for 25 years, from 1981 to 2006. He was also Professor and Head of Clinical Haematology at the University of British Columbia for 18 years. He is now Founder, President and CEO of STEMCELL Technologies Inc.

We caught up with Allen to find out more about life as a CEO, the role of companies in stem cell research and what keeps him interested in research.

Professor Jane Visvader is Joint Head of The Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium Laboratory at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia. Her lab is interested in how the mammary gland of the breast develops, and what goes wrong in breast cancer.

PhD student Giovanni Valenti interviewed Jane for EuroStemCell in September 2011, at Hydra VII: The European Summer School on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine.

Dr. Nick Barker is a Principal Investigator (PI) at the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB), A*STAR, Singapore. Currently, Nick also holds a visiting professorship at the University of Edinburgh’s MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine and is an associate Principal Investigator with the EC-funded research consortium EuroSyStem. Nick’s studies focus on tissue (adult) stem cells, particularly in the intestine, skin and stomach. He is also interested in the role of these stem cells in cancer.

Giuseppe Diafera interviewed Nick for EuroStemCell in September 2011, at Hydra VII: The European Summer School on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine.  

Karen is a post doctoral researcher in the lab of Prof. Kathryn Wood at the University of Oxford. Karen’s work contributes to the EC-funded project OptiStem. We caught up with Karen at the project’s 2011 annual meeting.

In June 2011, Danielle Nicholson met up with Doug Sipp from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB), Kobe, Japan at the International Society for Stem Cell Research 9th Annual Meeting in Stem Cell City, a.k.a. Toronto, Canada.

Christine Mummery is Professor and Chair of Developmental Biology at Leiden University Medical Centre. She pioneered studies on heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) made from human embryonic stem cells and was among the first to inject them into a mouse heart after a heart attack.

Yann Barrandon is a joint professor of Stem Cell Research and of Experimental Surgery at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Lausanne (UNIL). He is also Head of the Department of Experimental Surgery at the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV).

Cedric Blanpain leads a research group studying the mechanisms that control the behaviour of stem cells, and the role of stem cells in cancer.  He is Principal Investigator at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRIBHM), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium.