Professor of Stem Cell and Developmental Biology
Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW)
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Kilts Family Professor
Director of Diabetes Program
Vice Chair of Innovation in Surgery
Department of Surgery and Biochemistry
Director of Center for Genomic Health
Weill Cornell Medicine

Dr. Chen is the Kilts Family Professor and Vice Chair of Innovation in the Department of Surgery, as well as the Director of the Center for Genomic Health (CGH). Dr. Chen research has focused on leveraging human pluripotent stem cell-derived organoids for disease modeling and drug discovery. Her laboratory’s work has been published in Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Cell Biology, Cell Stem Cell, and Cell Metabolism, among others. Dr. Chen currently serves on the Board of Directors for International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and International Chemical Biology Society. She also serves on the editorial boards of Cell Stem Cell and Stem Cell Reports. Dr. Chen’s outstanding contributions have been recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Investigator Award, the American Diabetes Association Innovative Award, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and the ISSCR Dr. Susan Lim Award for Outstanding Young Investigator.

Research Fellow & Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland

Jo Bowles did a PhD in molecular parasitology at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and then moved into the field of developmental biology. Her postdoctoral work was done under the mentorship of Peter Koopman at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, UQ. During this period, she studied mammalian sex determination and biology of the Sox gene family. As a senior postdoc she began to focus on germ cells and in 2016 moved her team into the School of Biomedical Sciences, UQ.

Her research team aims to understand all of the signalling that is necessary to instruct naive mammalian germ cells to embark on either oogenesis or spermatogenesis. Key discoveries include 1) that retinoic acid in the fetal ovarian environment triggers germ cells to embark on meiosis; 2) that testicular germ cell fate is dependent on FGF signalling; and 3) that the Nodal/Cripto signalling pathway is normally active in germ cells of the fetal testis and abnormally active in certain forms of testis cancer. The studies have relevance to medical problems including fertility/infertility and testicular cancer as well as to our understanding of stem cell biology more broadly.

Group Leader, Peter MacCallum Cancer Center and the Department of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Melbourne.

A/Prof Louise Cheng is a group leader at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center and the Department of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Melbourne. Louise Cheng did her PhD at Kings College London (PhD), postdoctoral training in Alex Gould’s lab at the National Institute for Medical Research UK and became a group leader at the Peter Mac in 2012. She was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2019, and a Marshall and Warren NHMRC Research Excellence award in 2024. She leads the cancer cachexia program at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center. The Cheng lab uses the model organism Drosophila to address fundamental questions in biology such as how cell fate is maintained in the developing central nervous system, how the cellular niche and environmental factors determine a cell’s ability to acquire malignancy, and how inter-organ communication mediates cancer cachexia.

MBBS FRACP PhD
Co-Director, Centre for Heart Research – Westmead Institute for Medical Research, University of Sydney, Westmead Hospital, Sydney, Australia

James is an internationally recognised leader in regenerative cardiology. His group pioneers the use of pluripotent stem cell–derived cardiomyocytes to repair the injured heart, coupling fundamental developmental biology with large-animal translational studies and first-in-human trial planning. Beyond cell therapy, his team creates advanced human cardiac disease models that accelerate therapeutic discovery and precision-medicine approaches for heart failure.

James’ work has secured competitive funding from Australia’s major biomedical agencies—including the NHMRC, Medical Research Future Fund, and National Heart Foundation—most recently a ~A$5 million MRFF grant to deliver a Phase I clinical trial of stem-cell cardiomyocyte therapy. Findings from his laboratory appear in Nature, Nature Cardiovascular Research, Cell Stem Cell, Science Translational Medicine, and Nature Communications, and have been recognised with the NSW CVRN Rising Star Award, Heart Foundation Paul Korner Innovation Award, Metcalf Prize for Stem Cell Research, and the 2024 Jian Zhou Medal from the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Trained in cardiology at Westmead Hospital, James completed his PhD with Prof Richard Harvey (Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute) identifying a novel cardiac progenitor population, then pursued Fulbright- and NHMRC-supported post-doctoral studies with Prof Charles Murry at the University of Washington, advancing stem-cell cardiac repair in both small and large animal models.

Driven by rigorous science, cross-sector collaboration, and clinical innovation, Professor Chong is committed to bringing next-generation regenerative therapies from bench to bedside for patients with otherwise untreatable heart disease.

Dr Alexander Combes is head of the Development and Disease laboratory at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and Director of the Monash Genome Modification Platform - a gene editing facility supported by Phenomics Australia. His laboratory studies how the kidney forms during development and applies this knowledge to advance disease modelling and drug screening in kidney disease.

University of Melbourne, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry

Dr. Maria Di Biase is an emerging leader in biological psychiatry research, focused on uncovering the neurobiological mechanisms underlying severe mental illness. Her work centres on challenges such as biological heterogeneity and the search for clinical biomarkers. After postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School in 2020, she returned to Australia to establish her own research program investigating brain development in schizophrenia. She co-leads the Systems Neuropsychiatry Lab (Department of Psychiatry) and the Stem Cell Disease Modelling Lab (Department of Anatomy and Physiology) at the University of Melbourne, where she holds an NHMRC Investigator Grant and is an Al and Val Rostenstrauss Fellow supported by the Rebecca L. Cooper Medical Research Foundation.

Principal investigator, reNEW Melbourne node, Group Leader, Muscle Bioengineering Laboratory, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI)

A/Prof Richard Mills is principal investigator at the reNEW Melbourne node, and the group leader of the Muscle Bioengineering Laboratory at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI). His laboratory uses stem cells to generate human skeletal muscle and heart muscle tissue to study disease. Mills holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Queensland, Brisbane and completed post-doctoral training at The Karolinska Institute, Stockholm and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane.

Group Leader - Stem Cell Ethics & Policy
Murdoch Children's Research Institute

Megan Munsie PhD is a developmental biologist who leads research programs into ethical, legal and social implications of stem cell research at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the University of Melbourne and reNEW, the transglobal Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine. Her research focuses on understanding views and expectations held by patients, their families and other stakeholders, and the development of professional standards to enable responsible translation of stem cell and related research. Findings from her research have influenced policy reforms and informed numerous educational resources for patients, healthcare professionals and the general public. She is internationally recognised for her contribution to public outreach and advocacy. Megan is the immediate past President of the Australasian Society for Stem Cell Research and a member of the Board of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. She has served on advisory committees for numerous peak national and international bodies including the Australian Academy of Science. Megan has extensive experience in biotechnology and has also worked for ten years as a clinical embryologist in Australian IVF clinics. She completed her Masters of Reproductive Science and PhD at Monash University and her science degree at the Queensland University of Technology.  

Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Garvan Institute of Medical Research

Dr Drew Neavin is a senior post-doctoral research fellow at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research where she leads projects to unravel the molecular basis of disease and drug response. Dr. Neavin has pioneered a novel population-scale stem cell platform, called ‘village-in-a-dish’ that co-culture multiple unrelated stem cell lines to significantly reduce scale and cost of large-scale experiments.In her talk, she will explore the successes and hurdles of applying this platform to reveal how genetic differences functionally impact our health.

WEHI

Group Leader, Ngo Group
Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, UQ

Shyuan (Shu) is a Group Leader at for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (UQ), Director of the UQ Centre for Motor Neuron Disease (MND) Research, and an Affiliate/Adjunct Academic at the Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital (RBWH) and Murdoch University. She received her PhD in Neuroscience in 2009, after which, she transitioned to the field of MND. Shu started her independent research group at UQ in 2015 and has built a translational research program that integrates studies in people living with MND with studies in human-derived cell models (stem cell-derived neurons and organoids, human muscle cells) and mouse models of MND to define the mechanisms that drive MND and to identify therapeutic strategies for the disease.

Principal Research Fellow, Transcriptomics and Bioinformatics group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Co-Lead, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine, reNEW, Bioinformatics Hub.

A/Prof Fernando Rossello is a Principal Research Fellow in the Transcriptomics and Bioinformatics group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and co-leads the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine, reNEW, Bioinformatics Hub. He completed his PhD at La Trobe University (Australia) and held research positions at the Monash Institute for Medical Research (Centre for Cancer Research), the Victorian Bioinformatics Consortium (Department of Microbiology), Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology and Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, all affiliated with Monash University, and The University of Melbourne Centre for Cancer Research, primarily focusing on the application of bioinformatics to cancer and stem cell research.

The diversity of working environments has given him the expertise and training in a broad multidisciplinary base, which enabled him to integrate bioinformatics across multiple biological and medical disciplines and publish in top-tier journals including Nature, Oncogene, Cell Stem Cell, Nature Immunology and Human Molecular Genetics

In recent years, he has specialized in single cell omics technologies analyses applied to cancer and stem cells research, which allow for the characterisation of different aspects of the epigenome, genome, and transcriptome at single cells leve

Immune Development Laboratory
Principal Investigator, The Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Stem Cell Medicine, reNEW Melbourne
Murdoch Children's Research Institute
Professor, Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, The Royal Children's Hospital

Ed Stanley is an honorary professor at the University of Melbourne (Australia), head of the Immune Development laboratory at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), Royal Children's Hospital, and a principal investigator of the Novo Nordisk Centre for Stem Cell Medicine. He undertook his post-graduate studies at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Melbourne, obtaining a PhD from the University of Melbourne in 1989. Following post-doctoral studies in developmental biology at the National Institute for Medical Research, London (1993-1996) and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne (1996-2001), he co-founded The Embryonic Stem Cell Differentiation Laboratory at Monash University (2002-2012). In 2012, Ed joined the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, which is co-located with the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.

His current work focuses on the generation of immune cells from pluripotent stem cells. The underlying premise of this work is to create cell types relevant to the genesis type 1 diabetes (T1D), an autoimmune condition that has its most frequent onset during childhood. As part of this overarching goal, his group is interested in generating antigen presenting cells, including macrophages and dendritic cells, and cells of the adaptive immune system. In addition to forming the foundations of in vitro models for autoimmunity, laboratory made immune cells have potential as cellular therapies. In his presentation, Ed will describe recent work related to the generation of innate and adaptive immune cells from iPSCs.

Head of the Clem Jones Centre for Neurobiology and Stem Cell Research, Griffith University

Prof James St John is Head of the Clem Jones Centre for Neurobiology and Stem Cell Research at Griffith University. Since the commencement of the Centre in 2016, Prof St John has been lead investigator on AUD $40 million of research projects funded by philanthropy, state and federal governments. The major project of the Centre is the translation of a cellular nerve bridge transplantation therapy to repair spinal cord injury. The community co-designed therapy uses transplantation of olfactory glial cells within three-dimensional nerve bridges to repair the injury site of chronic spinal cord injury, combined with intensive long-term rehabilitation. This therapy is now progressing to a clinical trial that is commencing in late 2025 in Queensland. James was awarded the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Marshall and Warren Innovation Award in 2019 for the potential transformative power of the olfactory nerve bridges for neural repair. He was also awarded the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Consumer Involvement Award in 2025 for the co-design of the trial.

Laboratory Head, Personalised Oncology Division, WEHI

Dr Clare Weeden is a new Laboratory Head in the Personalised Oncology Division at WEHI, studying the impact of climate change upon respiratory health, including lung cancers. She completed her PhD and postdoctoral studies at WEHI with Prof Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat and Prof Daniel Gray, supported by a Lung Foundation Australia Early Career Fellowship and Cure Cancer/Cancer Australia project grant. Dr Weeden was then awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie/European Respiratory Society Postdoctoral Fellowship to join the laboratory of Prof Charles Swanton at the Francis Crick Institute in London before returning to WEHI to start her lab, supported by a CSL Centenary Fellowship.

Clare’s research centres upon the mechanisms regulating lung epithelial stem cell fates in response to the inhaled environment, with the aim of designing new early detection and intervention strategies for respiratory diseases.