Regulation of stem cell fate by niche-derived signals and forces

Speaker: Dr Sara Wickström, Helsinki Institute for Life Science (HiLIFE), University of Helsinki, Finland AND Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, Germany

Speaker Biography: Sara Wickström studied medicine at the University of Helsinki, Finland, receiving her MD in 2001 and PhD in 2004. After postdoctoral training with Reinhard Fässler at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich, Germany, she was appointed as Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Germany in 2010. In 2018 her laboratory moved to the newly founded Helsinki Institute for Life Science at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Research in the Wickström lab aims to establish quantitative principles of epidermal stem cell niche self-organization, and how mechanical forces and cellular interactions integrate single cell behaviours to generate and maintain global patterns of a multicellular tissue.