Human Brain Organoids as Avatars to Understanding Human Brain Development and Disease

Event Details

Type

Stem Cell Biology Seminars

Speaker(s)

Paola Arlotta, Ph.D., chair, department of stem cell and regenerative biology, Golub Family Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, associate member, Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute

Speaker bio(s)

Paola Arlotta, Ph.D., is the Chair and Golub Family Professor of Harvard's Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. She is also a faculty member at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Arlotta's research program explores the interface between development and engineering of the brain, to gain fundamental understanding of both the principles that govern normal brain development and of previously-inaccessible mechanisms of human neurological disease. Notably, the lab has developed new stem cell-based models of the human brain, 3D brain organoids, to study how the human brain is made and how neuropsychiatric illness affects it. Dr. Arlotta received her M.S. in biochemistry from the University of Trieste, Italy, and her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Portsmouth in the UK. She subsequently completed her postdoctoral training in neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. She has won numerous awards including the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award, the George Ledlie Prize, the Fannie Cox Prize, the Gutenberg Prize, and a Harvard College Professorship. Her research has been published in and widely cited in many noteworthy journals including Nature, Science, and Cell.

Open to

Tri-Institutional