These workshops provide training in essential “soft skills” and encourage critical thinking and discussion.
Preliminary programme of the 2026 Stem Cells in Neuroscience meeting in Tübingen, Germany
25-27 Feb 2026 in Tübingen, Germany
© Copyright – stemcelltuebingen.com
Elly Hol is Vice-Dean of Research of the University Medical Center Utrecht, professor of “Glia biology of brain diseases” at the Utrecht University, a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and a member of the Academia Europaea.
She is head of the department of Translational Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Utrecht Brain Center. Her research is focused on the role of glial cells in brain diseases. The overall aim is to elucidate the molecular and functional changes in glia that contribute to the pathogenesis of neurological and psychiatric diseases. Her work is translational and includes studies on glial cells in human post-mortem brain tissue, in human cell models, and in mouse models for brain diseases. Elly was trained as a medical biologist with a specialization in molecular neurobiology. After her PhD in Utrecht, she obtained a Max-Planck Fellowship to work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry in Martinsried.
In 1997, she started as a post-doc at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam, and between 2003 and 2013 she headed the group “Astrocyte Biology & Neurodegeneration”. She was appointed professor of “Biology of glia and neural stem cells” at the University of Amsterdam in 2012. As of 2013 she works as a principal investigator at the department of translational neuroscience, UMC Utrecht Brain Center. She is in the editorial board of Glia and she is a board member of the Medical, Biomedical, and Health Sciences Domain of the KNAW.
Dr. Kampmann is the Dorothy Bronson Professor in the UCSF Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases. He received his BA in Biochemistry from Cambridge University and his PhD from Rockefeller University.
Dr. Kampmann’s goal is to uncover the molecular and cellular mechanisms driving neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Kampmann co-invented CRISPRi and CRISPRa screening and pioneered CRISPR-based screens in human brain cell types such as neurons, microglia and astrocytes. More recently, his lab also established mouse in vivo CRISPR screening platforms. Key discoveries from the Kampmann lab include the first molecular description of neurons that are selectively vulnerable in Alzheimer’s Disease in the human entorhinal cortex, a brain area affected early in disease; key cellular factors mediating spreading of aggregation of the protein tau, which is thought to drive progression of Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias; the molecular pathway by which human mitochondria signal stress to the rest of the cell; and regulators of disease-relevant states of microglia and astrocytes.
Dr. Kampmann was named an NIH Director’s New Innovator, an Allen Distinguished Investigator, an Alzheimer Association Zenith fellow, and a Bowes Biomedical Investigator, and he received the Rainwater Prize for Innovative Early Career Scientist and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Award.
Jürgen Knoblich is deputy scientific director at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) in Vienna.
His research focuses on the development of the human brain and the study of neurodevelopmental disorders. Knoblich’s group has established a 3D culture system that recapitulates the early steps of human brain development in cell culture allowing brain pathologies and human specific developmental events to be studied in unprecedented detail.
They have used this system for modelling various neurodevelopmental disorders and genetic screening in human brain tissue.
Botond Roska obtained his M.D. at the Semmelweis Medical School, a Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of California, Berkeley and studied genetics and virology as a Harvard Society Fellow at Harvard University and the Harvard Medical School. He then led a research group at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel from 2005-2018. In 2010 he became Professor at the Medical Faculty and in 2019 Professor at the Science Faculty of the University of Basel. Since 2018 he is a founding director of the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB). At IOB he leads a research group focusing on the understanding of vision and its diseases and the development of gene therapies to restore vision. Botond Roska received several awards, including the Alcon Award in 2011, the Cogan Award in 2016, the Bressler Prize in 2018, the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine, the Körber European Science Prize, the Greenberg End Blindness Visionary Prize in 2020, the International Prize for Translational Neuroscience in 2023 and the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2024.
Dr. Julia TCW is an Assistant Professor at Boston University and a Director of the Laboratory of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapeutics. She received Ph.D. and A.M. in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University and researched in iPSC reprogramming in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. She then perused her postdoctoral research in the Department of Neuroscience, Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease at Mount Sinai, New York. Her research focuses on studying Alzheimer’s disease genetics and functional genomics especially APOE using computational approaches and human iPSC models for the development of therapeutic modalities. She selected as 2022 Toffler Scholar and achieved Druckenmiller Fellowship award from New York Stem Cell Foundation, NIH K and R awards, Alzheimer’s Disease Research Award from BrightFocus Foundation, Carol and Gene Ludwig Award for Neurodegeneration Research and Edward N. and Della L. Thome Memorial Foundation Award.
Dr. TCW’s laboratory is aiming at Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therapeutics using human induced pluripotent stem cells and genetic approach. There are three main goals: 1) Identifying functional genes in particular CNS cell types affected by AD genetic and epigenetic signatures, 2) Deciphering functional mechanisms of AD genetics using in vitro iPSCs and in vivo iPSC/mouse Chimera models and 3) Developing in vitro model systems of human brain for drug screen.
Anna Williams is the Professor of Regenerative Neurology here at the University of Edinburgh. She is also a consultant neurologist, with a busy clinic in the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic.
Her research group is interested primarily in understanding how oligodendrocytes and the myelin of the central nervous system work, how they interact with nerves and blood vessels, and how they are maintained and repaired in diseases such as multiple sclerosis and cerebral small vessel disease, with the ultimate aim of trying to improve this and therefore improve patient therapies.
Anna co-directs the Centre for Regenerative Medicine, the MS Society Edinburgh Research Centre, and is deputy director of the British Heart Foundation Research Excellence Centre in Edinburgh. She also sits on the MS Society UK and French MS Society (ARSEP) grant panels, and is a MS Society UK ambassador.
