Dr. Michael Rudnicki is a Senior Scientist and Director of the Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He is Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Rudnicki’s achievements have been recognized by numerous honours including being named a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for two consecutive terms, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Dr. Rudnicki is an internationally recognized thought leader in molecular genetics and regenerative medicine whose research has transformed our understanding of muscle development and regeneration, and fueled the development of novel molecular and stem cell based approaches to the treatment of muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular disorders. Dr. Rudnicki’s key discovery was the identification and characterization of muscle stem cells. This work pivoted the field towards the study of adult regenerative myogenesis and set the stage for novel molecular and stem cell based approaches to the treatment of muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular disorders. Dr. Rudnicki is a member of the editorial boards of Cell Stem Cell, Journal of Cell Biology, and Stem Cells. He is a founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Skeletal Muscle. Dr. Rudnicki has also organized many international research conferences and was a founding director of the Society for Muscle Biology.

As Scientific Director for SCN, Dr. Rudnicki provides direction and leadership for the Network’s Research program and serves as the Chair of SCN’s Research Management Committee and is a member of the Board of Directors.

Dr. Jon Draper joined SCN in 2018, where he leads the strategic design and implementation of SCN’s research and training programing. Jon has overseen research funding competitions that have delivered over $54M in SCN funding to 124 research projects, including clinical trials, and over 130 training events that have provided more than 5,000 opportunities to trainees in SCN’s community. Before joining SCN, Jon spent two decades advancing the field of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), contributing key insights into their properties, including their genetic stability and therapeutic potential. He held a Canada Research Chair for 10 years at McMaster University, where his team developed hPSC and organoid models to study cell fate and disease mechanisms. Jon remains an active participant within the international stem cell community, serving on the steering committee of the International Stem Cell Initiative, the Research Advisory Council of Cystic Fibrosis Canada, and recently on the ISSCR’s Standards Initiative for Pluripotent Stem Cell Research.

Gary Bader is a Professor at The Donnelly Centre at the University of Toronto and an expert in Computational Biology. The Bader lab is developing computational methods and an ecosystem theory of tissue function that considers cell-cell interactions, cell growth, and cell internal mechanisms, such as pathways, reactions, and causal relationships, to help understand development, cancer and regenerative wound healing processes. See http://baderlab.org

Dr. Gilbert is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering where she held the Canada Research Chair in Endogenous Repair. Her interdisciplinary team explores muscle stem cell mechanobiology and engineers three-dimensional human skeletal muscle culture models with the overarching goal of identifying signaling pathways that can be modulated to improve skeletal muscle health.

Clinician, scientist and entrepreneur, Massimiliano Paganelli is associate professor of pediatrics at the Université de Montréal and pediatric transplant hepatologist and researcher at the CHU Sainte-Justine, in Montreal. After completing his medical studies and pediatric training in Rome, Italy, Max trained in hepatology and liver transplantation in Brussels, Belgium, and obtained a PhD in Hepatology and Cell Therapy at the Université catholique de Louvain. Recruited by CHU Sainte-Justine in 2015, he is a FRQS Junior 2 clinician-scientist and leads a CIHR-, NSERC- and Stem Cell Network-funded laboratory. Research in his laboratory focuses on the use of stem cell-derived liver tissues for the study and treatment of severe liver diseases affecting children and adults. From his lab he spun out Morphocell Technologies Inc., a regenerative medicine company developing breakthrough cell and tissue therapies for liver disease, of which he is the Chief Executive Officer. Under his leadership, Morphocell raised a US$50M series A, has grown to 50 employees and established offices and laboratories in three countries, with headquarters in the Greater Montreal area. Through Morphocell Technologies, he is bringing the fruit of these research back to patients in need.

Dr. Rossi obtained his M.D. from the University of Genova, his hometown in Italy. He performed his graduate work under the supervision of Thomas Graf, at the European Molecular Biology Laboratories in Heidelberg, Germany. He was a postdoctoral fellow, and later a senior scientist in the laboratory of Helen Blau at Stanford University, where he developed a commercially successful protein interaction assay based on enzyme complementation. He joined UBC as an independent investigator in 2001. He was the director of the Biomedical Research Centre on the UBC campus for over a decade, and the inaugural associate director of research of the School of Biomedical Engineering. He served as a member of the board of directors of the Stem Cell Network. His research focusses on the interactions between stroma and inflammatory cells and their role in regeneration. Notable contributions include the first demonstration that CNS microglia are independent of bone marrow hematopoiesis and the first description of the cells causing fibrofatty infiltration in chronically damaged skeletal muscle, and their role in regeneration.

Dr. Amy Wong is a leading expert in stem cell-based respiratory disease modeling. Her pioneering work established robust methods to generate mature airway epithelial cells from human pluripotent stem cells (Wong et al., Nature Biotechnology, 2012), demonstrating that these stem cell-derived cultures can faithfully recapitulate airway biology and serve as powerful platforms for studying airway cell development, Cystic Fibrosis (CF) disease and evaluating novel therapeutic for CF precision medicine.

Her research program harnesses unique preclinical human lung models, including iPSC-derived and primary tissues, to dissect the molecular and cellular mechanisms that govern lung development and disease. This foundational knowledge is being translated to uncover the origins of pulmonary diseases and to guide the development of transformative therapies for both congenital and acquired lung conditions. Through strategic collaborations and a commitment to translational impact, Dr. Wong is driving forward a vision of precision medicine for respiratory health – where developmental insights fuel therapeutic innovation.