Blair Benham-Pyle, Baylor College of Medicine, USA
Blair Benham-Pyle, Assistant Professor at the Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine Center, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, USA, will present her talk: "Deconstructing and Reconstructing Whole-body Regeneration: Identifying cells and molecules important regenerative capacity in Schmidtea mediterranea".
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Dr. Benham-Pyle is an interdisciplinary scientist trained in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. She completed her PhD at Stanford University with W. James Nelson and Beth Pruitt, studying how cell-cell adhesions translate mechanical force into cell behavior. She then moved to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, where she completed her postdoctoral work with Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado studying mechanisms by which post-mitotic cells regulate regeneration, scaling, and behavior. Highlights from her postdoctoral work include the first molecular dissection of asexual reproduction behavior in planaria, a single-cell atlas of planarian regeneration that identified transient regeneration-activated cell states (TRACS). Dr. Benham-Pyle joined Baylor College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in 2022. Her research group leverages the remarkable biology of planarian flatworms to study stem cells, regeneration, aging, and cancer resistance.
