The Speakers
Suzana Herculano-HouzelMaría Blasco |
Prof. Suzana Herculano-Houzel (Vanderbilt University, TN) specializes in comparative neuroanatomy and brain evolution. Her work has focused on examining the extent of brain diversity and its constraints in mammals and birds, through quantitative analyses of brain morphology and how it relates to the numbers of neuronal and non-neuronal cells that compose the brains of different species. Her work shows that the human brain is just a scaled-up primate brain in its number of neurons and their distribution – yet, thanks to an enriched diet, humans afford the largest number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, which distinguishes them from every other animal on Earth, irrespective of brain size. Born in Brazil, Prof. Herculano-Houzel trained in Biology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, obtained a Master’s degree in Science at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, OH, where she studied the development of the peripheral nervous system under Prof. Story Landis, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Paris VI, France, while working in visual system neurophysiology under Prof. Wolf Singer at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany. She worked as a science communicator at the Museum of Life at Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Brazil, between 1999 and 2002, and later became Assistant Professor (2002-2005) and Associate Professor (2005-2016) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where she started her current research program. She moved to Vanderbilt University in 2016.
María A. Blasco obtained her PhD in 1993 for her research at the Centro de Biología Molecular "Severo Ochoa" under the supervision of M. Salas. That same year, Blasco joined the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York (USA) as a Postdoctoral Fellow under the leadership of C. W. Greider. In 1997 she returned to Spain to start her own research Group at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología in Madrid. She joined the CNIO in 2003 as Director of the Molecular Oncology Programme and Leader of the Telomeres and Telomerase Group. In 2005 she was also assigned as Vice-Director of Basic Research and in 2011 she was appointed as CNIO Director.
Her major research achievements include: (1) Isolation of the core components of mouse telomerase and generation of the first knockout mouse for telomerase; (2) Generation of the first mouse with increased telomerase expression in adult tissues; (3) The finding that mammalian telomeres and subtelomeres have epigenetic marks characteristic of constitutive heterochromatin; (4) Discovery of telomeric RNAs, which are potent telomerase-inhibitors whose expression is altered in cancer; (5) Demonstration that telomerase activity and telomere length determine the regenerative capacity of adult stem cells; (6) Identification of the longest telomeres as a universal feature of adult stem cell niches; (7) The finding that telomerase overexpression in the context of cancer resistant-mice improves organismal fitness, produces a systemic delay in ageing and an extension in median life-span; (8) Discovery that telomeres rejuvenate after nuclear reprogramming; (9) Identification of the molecular mechanisms by which short telomeres/DNA damage limit nuclear reprogramming of defective cells; (10) Discovery that telomeric protein TRF1 can act as both a tumour suppressor and as a factor in ageing prevention. Blasco has received the Josef Steiner Cancer Research, Rey Jaime I, Körber European Science, Alberto Sols and Fundación Lilly Preclinical Research, Awards. She has also been the recipient of the Spanish National "Santiago Ramón y Cajal" Research Award in Biology (2010). Blasco has also been awarded the EMBO Gold Medal and has served on its Council since 2008. |
Thomas PradeuAntónio AlmeidaPaulo Vieira |
Thomas Pradeu is a permanent Senior investigator at CNRS & University of Bordeaux, France. He is a group leader and holder of an ERC Starting Grant in the immunology unit ImmunoConcept in Bordeaux. His research deals with philosophy of science as well as conceptual and theoretical biology, especially immunology.
Antonio Almeida
Hospital da Luz, Lisbon, Portugal Antonio Almeida is currently head of department at Hospital da Luz, Lisbon, Portugal andalso head of the hemato-oncology diagnostic laboratory at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology in Lisbon. He was awarded his medical degree in 1993 from Cambridge University, UK, and completed his Specialist Training in Haematology in the UK in 2002. Following this Dr Almeida completed a clinical research fellowship through the Leukaemia Research Fund at Imperial College, London, and was awarded a PhD in 2007 for his work on the molecular characterization and targeted therapy for Inherited GPI Deficiency. Dr Almeida’s research interests include myeloproliferative and myelodysplastic syndromes, focusing on epigenetic regulation of transcription regulation. He leads a Haematology Epigenetic research group and is the national principal investigator for several clinical trials in CML and MDS. Dr Almeida has written book chapters and is the author of a range of articles published in journals including New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine and Blood. Paulo Vieira obtained his M.D. from the New University of Lisbon, Portugal in 1984. After postdoctoral work in Germany and California, he joined the Gulbenkian Institute, where, from 1995 to 2000, he was responsible for the organization of the Gulbenkian PhD Program in Biology and Medicine and headed the Gene Targeting Facility. In 2001, he moved to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France.
The main research focus of his group is the study of lymphocyte commitment and differentiation, with particular emphasis on B-lymphocyte development. Over the last few years, he has studied the differences between lymphocyte development in fetal liver and adult bone marrow. |