Welcome New Officers!
Anna-Katerina Hadjantonakis, President-Elect
Anna-Katerina (Kat) Hadjantonakis is a member and chair of the Developmental Biology Program, and a member of Center for Stem Cell Biology at the Sloan Kettering Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. She holds the Alfred P. Sloan endowed chair. Her lab use genetic, genomic and imaging approaches to investigate how individual cells regulate their identity, and how they collaborate to collectively build tissues during mammalian development in mouse animal models, and mouse and human stem cell-based embryo models. The primary focus of the Hadjantonakis lab is on the development and differentiation of the endoderm, and of how this progenitor tissue of the embryo elaborates to give rise to the respiratory and digestive tract organs. Dr Hadjantonakis received a BSc in Biochemistry, and PhD in Molecular Genetics, from Imperial College, London. Thereafter she pursued postdoctoral training, first with Andras Nagy at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Toronto, and thereafter with Virginia Papaioannou at Columbia University, New York. She established an independent research group at the Sloan Kettering Institute in 2004. She has authored over 200 publications, and currently serves as an editor at the journals Development and Science Advances, and is a member of the editorial board of the journals, Developmental Cell and Stem Cell Reports.
Kathleen Whitlock, Secretary/Treasurer
Kathleen (Kate) Whitlock is member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Neuroscience and the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Valparaiso in Valparaiso Chile. Her lab uses zebrafish as a model system to study development of the olfactory sensory system and neuroendocrine signaling related to olfaction and reproduction. Using live imaging techniques combined with genetic and molecular approaches, her lab has shown that peripheral and central olfactory tissues develop from a continuous field of neurectoderm as opposed to sequential induction events. Her lab has described an extensive blood/lymphatic vascular system that forms during development of the olfactory organ and appears to underlie neuroendocrine signaling via the olfactory epithelia. Dr. Whitlock received a BSc in Biology with a second field in Art, and a Masters in Neurobiology at the State University of New York at Albany. She received her PhD in Zoology at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) and continued to her postdoctoral work with Dr. Monte Westerfield at the Institute for Neuroscience, University of Oregon. She established her first independent research group in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University (1998) and subsequently moved to Chile to establish an independent research group in the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Valparaíso (2006). Dr. Whitlock is the founder and director of the nationally recognized science outreach program “Ciencia Al Tiro” (Science Immediately), has served on the Board of Directors, Fulbright Commission (Chile), and is currently the outgoing President of the International Zebrafish Society.
Executives
President:
Sally Dunwoodie, Australia
President Elect: Anna Katerina Hadjantonakis, USA
Secretary/Treasurer: Kathleen Whitlock, Chile
Past President: Richard Behringer, USA
Editors-In-Chief, Differentiation: Loydie Jerome-Majewska, Canada; Crystal Rogers, USA; Rosa Uribe, USA
Directors
Josh Brickman (Denmark)
James Briscoe (UK)
Jyotsna Dhawan (India)
Pamela Hoodless (Canada)
Raj Ladher (India)
Karen Liu (UK)
Peter Lwigale (USA)
Elke Ober (Denmark)
Stephanie Ma (Hong Kong)
Eli Zelzer (Israel)