This event is part of the Jesus College Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub events programme.

Digital technologies lie at the heart of modern biomedical research. They are used to study the molecules of life, the sequence of our genes, how our cells function and how our bodies are shaped. The body has the capacity to repair itself after injury, but within strict limits. Regenerative Medicine attempts to understand this process, so that we can harness its potential for therapeutic purposes.

The Institute of Developmental and Regenerative Medicine (IDRM) in Oxford combines developmental biology with regenerative medicine, and seeks to understand how organs (the brain, heart and immune system) form in the first place during pregnancy, to gain insights into how to reform them following injury or disease. Advanced digital imaging lies at the heart of the IDRM’s core mission in providing a critical window into the cellular and sub-cellular responses during development and disease, enabling us to visualise where and how we might therapeutically intervene.

Join three leading researchers, all Fellows of Jesus College, based in the IDRM for a discussion of the latest developments in this area and the digital technologies proving transformative to the field.
The talk will be followed by a drinks reception.

Please use Jesus College Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub entrance on Market Street, Oxford. Doors open at 5pm.

Georg Holländer

Georg Holländer is the Hoffmann and Action Medical Research Professor of Developmental Medicine and Head of the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford. He is also the Director of the Botnar Research Centre of Child Health in Basel, Switzerland. Trained in Paediatrics and experimental immunology he held in the past academic positions at Harvard Medical School and was the director of research at Basel University’s Children’s Hospital. Since 2010 he is the Hoffmann and Action Medical Research Professor of Developmental Medicine at the University of Oxford and a professorial fellow at Jesus College. He shares his work and time between Oxford und Basel where he supervises research labs focusing on the developmental immunobiology of the thymus. He received the Fanconi Prize of the Swiss Society for Paediatrics in 2009, was chosen a corresponding member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012, and elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in the UK. Since 2019, he is also the director of there Botnar Research Centre for Child Health in Basel, Switzerland.

Paul Riley

Paul Riley is a British Heart Foundation Professor of Regenerative Medicine based at the University of Oxford. He is also Director of the BHF Oxbridge Centre for Regenerative Medicine and inaugural Director of the Institute of Developmental and Regenerative Medicine which came online in May 2022. He was formerly Professor of Molecular Cardiology at the UCL-Institute of Child Health, London, where he was a principal investigator within the Molecular Medicine Unit for 12 years. Prior to this, he obtained his PhD at UCL and completed post-doctoral fellowships in Toronto and Oxford. In 2008, Professor Riley was awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award by the European Society of Cardiology, in recognition of his team’s discovery that activated epicardial cells can regenerate the adult mammalian heart, and in 2014 he was elected a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. His research interests span across multiple aspects of cardiovascular development and how to restore embryonic potential in the injured/diseased adult heart to facilitate optimal repair and regeneration.

Shankar Srinivas

Shankar Srinivas is Professor of Developmental Biology in the Department of Physiology Anatomy & Genetics, Institute of Developmental and Regenerative Medicine and the Zeitlyn Fellow in Medicine at Jesus College, Oxford. Shankar completed a BSc in Nizam College in Hyderabad, and then a PhD in Columbia University, New York. Following this, he moved to the NIMR in Mill Hill, London, for post-doctoral work. He established his independent group at the University of Oxford in 2004, using mouse and human embryos to study how the body is shaped in utero and how the heart forms and starts to beat. Shankar’s group takes a multidisciplinary approach to address these questions, using techniques spanning molecular genetics, time-lapse microscopy and machine learning based analytical approaches. Shankar is also passionate about science outreach and public engagement. His group participates regularly in science festivals, and collaborates with dancers, choreographers and Virtual Reality specialists to generate movement based art, to explore different perspectives on how the form of the body is determined.