Keynote Speaker: Madeline Lancaster, Ph.D.

Madeline Lancaster, Ph.D.
Group Leader, Cell Biology Divison
Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (United Kingdom)

Madeline Lancaster, Ph.D., is a group leader in the cell biology division of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), part of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, UK. Lancaster joined the LMB in 2015, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) in Vienna, where she developed brain organoids.

Research in the Lancaster lab focuses on human brain development using stem cells to generate brain organoids that allow modeling of human brain development in vitro. The laboratory studies the most fundamental differences between human brain development and that of other mammalian species. The lab also studies cellular mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and intellectual disability.

Lancaster is the recipient of the 3Rs Prize by the National Centre for Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) in 2015 for her development of a 3D model of the embryonic human brain created from stem cells (brain organoids), which minimizes the use of animals in medical research. She was awarded the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) Dr. Susan Lim Award for Outstanding Young Investigator and a Vallee Scholarship in 2021 and honored as the Laureate for Life Sciences in the 2022 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in the UK.

Aside from being an award-winning researcher, Lancaster has also presented her work on human brain development in cerebral organoids at the 2015 TEDxCERN event.