Associate Research Specialist

EDUCATION AND POSITIONS HELD:

• Ph.D., Reproductive Genetics, University of London (2001)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Oregon National primate Research Center, Oregon Health and Science University (2000-2003)
• Staff Scientist, Oregon National primate Research Center, Oregon Health and Science University (2003-2004)

HONORS:

• Research Creation Award for Undergraduate Students, NSC, Taiwan, 1993
• St Thomas’ trustee Scholarship, 1997
• King’s College Scholarship, 1998
• NIH postdoctoral fellowship, 2000

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

As the first step of exploring the potential application of primate ES cells for cellular therapy, drug discovery and biomedical research, we have established strategy for isolating, enriching and characterizing neural, cardiac and pancreatic cells from monkey and human ES cells. We have also derived

new ES cell lines from non-human primates to investigate the fundamental cellular and molecular mechanisms governing pluripotency and differentiation of ES cells. The current main objectives of our lab are to (1) Characterize the cellular and molecular events underlying totipotency and pluripotency during preimplantatio development and their implication for pluripotent cell isolation. (2) Use ES cells as an in vitro model for organogenesis, with emphasis on in vitro formation of embryonic hear structure, pancreatic islets and craniofacial tissues. (3) Derivation of germ cells from primate embryonic stem cells.