• Passaging PSCs in a Feeder-free Culture System
• Grooming Techniques to Remove Spontaneous Differentiation (Jeffrey Fergus, Thermo-Fisher)

Course Directors

Dr. Joseph Bressler is a research scientist at Kennedy Krieger Institute. He is also an associate professor of environmental health sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Bressler received his bachelor's of science degree in biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1973 and his doctoral degree in physiology from Rutgers University in 1978. His post-doctoral training at UCLA was in neurosciences, where he studied the involvement of glial cells in response to toxic agents. After his post-doctoral training, Dr. Bressler continued his studies on glial cells at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. Dr. Bressler has been a research scientist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute since 1988. 

Guest Lecturers and Lab Instructors

	David M. Panchision, PhD David Panchision is the Chief of the Developmental Neurobiology Program at the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Panchision coordinates funding initiatives for the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to study mental illness. He is Science Officer overseeing several cooperative agreements related to the use of iPSCs, including academic-industry partnerships (PAR-13-225) to use iPSCs to develop validated platforms for identifying novel targets and developing new therapeutics to treat mental illness. Prior to joining NIMH, he was Assistant Professor at Children’s National Medical Center and George Washington University in Washington, DC, where his research focused on the interaction between morphogen and oxygen response signaling in both normal neural stem cells and patient‐derived brain cancer stem cells.
	Donald W. Fink, Jr., PhD Dr. Donald Fink is in the Cell Therapy Branch, Division of Cellular and Gene Therapies, Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies (OTAT), Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), FDA. He possesses over 20-years of regulatory review experience evaluating applications for a diversity of products including cell-based therapies, recombinant proteins, monoclonal antibody-based reagents, therapeutic vaccines, medical devices used for collection of cellular blood components, cell selection, or preparation of autologous cellular grafts; and combination products. Presently, Dr. Fink is engaged in regulatory activities pertaining to investigational products comprised of or derived from stem cells. He oversees an extensive portfolio of applications that includes hematopoietic, mesenchymal, cord blood, placenta-derived, and pluripotent stem cell-derived cellular products.
	Ilyas Singec, MD, PhD Ilyas Singeç joined NCATS in 2015 as the director of Stem Cell Translation Laboratory in the Division of Pre-Clinical Innovation. Singeç translates stem cell discoveries into clinical applications, focusing on the development of new assays (tests), drugs and cell therapies. Prior to joining NCATS, Singeç carried out postdoctoral work first at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and then at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, California, where he also served as staff scientist and director of cell reprogramming. Most recently, Singeç worked in the pharmaceutical and entrepreneurial industries. Singeç earned his M.D. and Ph.D. summa cum laude in Germany at the Universities of Bonn and Freiburg, completing his residency in clinical neuropathology and neuroanatomy in Freiburg.
	Tea Soon Park, PhD Dr. Park is a Research Associate at Division of Pediatric Oncology and Institute for Cell Engineering, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Foundation of her researches is on generation of clinically relevant human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) into hemato-vascular lineage and enhancement of functional pluripotency using naïve reversion method. Using these technologies, her current research focuses on treatment of ischemic damages (e.g. ischemic retinopathy) and diabetic vascular complications with iPSC derived progenitor cells.