Visitor of the Week: Ahlam Alamri

Meet Ahlam Alamri of the University of Aberdeen (United Kingdom). The PhD student is a member of J. Martin Collinson’s lab who is presently at this week’s meeting on Stem Cell Biology. This is her first meeting at CSHL “and it is not going to be the last one.” Her maiden experience included a poster presentation on “Pax6-mutant mice do have active Limbal epithelial stem cells ....but do not respond to corneal injury” which also happens to also be Ahlam’s very first poster presentation. Her colleauges “came and asked questions starting informal chats,” making her experience an incredible one.

What are your research interests? What are you working on?
I am working with limbal epithelial stem cells and how they play a role in the maintenance of the cornea.  

How did you decide to make this the focus of your research?  
I became interested in stem cells after my master’s degree which was in hematology. As I was deciding what to do for my PhD, I was thinking about something that can be new and found that stem cells is the window of the future and stem cells can be studies in medical genetics, hematology, immunology...etc. So, many studies are going in labs to understand the significant role stem cells play in the maintenance of the eye. Prof. J. Martin Collinson is my inspiration and I am doing my PhD under his supervision. I can remember the first interview with him and the way he talked about his work. Working with limbal epithelial stem cells in mutant mice in vivo and in vitro has given me more experience and expanded my knowledge to figure out how ocular surface is maintained in health and disease.  

Was there something specific about the Stem Cell Biology Meeting that drew you to attend?
The number of stem cell topics to be covered in the meeting drew me to attend and it has been excellent.

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting?
Stem cells are an extremely valuable key to understanding the causes of many diseases.

If someone curious in attending this meeting asked you for feedback or advice on it, what would you tell him/her?
It is the one of the best meetings on stem cell and is one he/she should not miss it. It exceeded my expectations.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
The campus is incredible. The harbor is amazing and is a great area to walk around.  Also, the participants of the meeting come from many different countries but we share similar interests. I met new colleagues and have enjoyed their company and conversations.

Thank you to Ahlam for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

A Word From: Fiona Watt, Marius Wernig & Ken Zaret

L to R: Ken Zaret, Fiona Watt, Marius Wernig; Photo by Constance Brukin

The fifth biennial meeting on Stem Cell Biology was held at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory September 25-29, 2017. We spoke with the meeting’s organizers Fiona Watt, Marius Wernig, and Kenneth Zaret, about changes the field and meeting have experienced over the past decade.

Fiona: At huge stem cell meetings, all constituencies are represented and there’s usually a focus on the translational aspect: getting cells into therapies and patients. That’s really important, but here we’re mainly focused on mechanism.

Kenneth: I’ve heard from a lot of people this year that they really enjoyed the program because the emphasis is on understanding mechanism and how things work. There was a period when the stem cell field and meetings were often characterized by more descriptive stuff: “Let me show you what I can differentiate my stem cells into and how well that works.” But there's been a sort of resurgence of the basic science underlying those processes, and that has made this meeting more interesting. 

Marius: Yeah, now there’s much more understanding. The protocols have improved, and the cells have actually gotten useful for various purposes. In addition, there is a lot of new technology, particularly single cell approaches. I think we had some spectacular talks at this meeting on the new directions taken. 

Fiona: The other thing I like is that, in the past, you would be interested only in your own stem cell, your own experimental model. As mechanism has come to the fore, there’s so much you can pick up regardless of what the experimental system is. 

Kenneth: More general principles.

Fiona: Exactly. 

Marius: Stem cell biology is a great glue that can bring together people from completely different disciplines. For example, I would never normally talk to someone who studies livers. But with stem cells as a common denominator, the liver person and I may use similar experimental approaches, and so we can learn from each other technically and conceptually.

Kenneth: And that’s all enabled by talking about the underlying mechanisms and processes rather than descriptive phenomena surrounding them. 

With these changes in the field, we were curious to learn of the developments they personally found most exciting: 

Marius: At this point, the single cell technology is only descriptive but it’s still exciting. People are now realizing that they have to partner it with functional assays.

Kenneth: In addition to single cell analysis, we heard exciting new ways to do lineage labeling, and to map fields of cells based on their polarity in 3D, which I thought was a neat technological advance. 

Fiona: People are also getting more rigorous with their terminology. Christopher Lengner gave a really interesting talk about quiescent stem cells in the gut that started off by defining exactly what it means. It’s that rigor and good experimentation which I’ve really enjoyed. 

Kenneth: Another dimension is that the new technologies require sophisticated math and statistical analysis that a lot of biologists don’t have. It’s resulted in an influx of people from physics, statistics, and math to the field, which has been great. 

Our chat concluded with who they thought would benefit most from attending the meeting, and what makes the CSHL Stem Cell Biology meeting unique:

Kenneth: People studying disease could benefit from the sophistication now in our field, to model human disease using stem cells -- genetic disease, susceptibility or response to drugs, things like that. As Marius said, we’ve gotten so much better at making different types of cells, organoids, and higher-order structured tissues, and using them in assays. Those who might have thought that anything other than an animal study would be difficult, are now enabled by technology in the stem cell field.  

Fiona: There’s something for everybody but I think it’s important to give postdocs and PhD students exposure to the best stuff going on in the field, because that inspires them. We also made a big effort in 2017 to ensure a lot of early-career, independent researchers presented their work. 

Marius: Folks who just started their own lab or are about to start one could benefit from attending this meeting. They not only stay current with new content, but they also meet people in the field. Networking is really important.

Fiona: I brought three PhD students to the meeting this year, and two gave posters in the same session. They were shocked that anybody would want to look at their posters, and were exhausted by the level of questions. There were a lot of good questions in all the sessions, very good-natured and constructive questions.

Kenneth: I got feedback that the small size of this meeting and its intimacy allowed people to talk directly to one another. It was easier for younger participants to talk to the more established people. 

Marius: I also heard from participants that the setting here is just so supportive of interactions and discussions.

Kenneth: You’re sequestered , if you will, on a single site, and you’re cloistered in a way that makes it very, very concentrated. The geography encourages you to be with people, talk science, and make it as meaningful as possible. That’s what distinguishes a Cold Spring Harbor meeting from many other venues. Also there’s so much history here: You walk around and see pictures where scientists are made to be heroes. Where else can you go where scientists are heroes? For young people, it’s very inspiring. I came to my first CSHL meeting in the late 1970’s, I gave my first talk here - ever - in 1980, and I couldn’t have been more scared or thrilled. 

The Stem Cell Biology meeting returns to the Laboratory in 2019. Visit our website for a list of the meetings and courses taking place in 2018.

For more conversation with other meeting organizers, check out the rest of our A Word From series. 

Visitor of the Week: Semil Choksi

Meet Semil Choksi of the University of California, San Francisco. An assistant professional scientist in Jeremy Reiter's lab, Semil is on campus for the Stem Cell Biology meeting where he presented a poster titled "Generation of airway stem cells by direct transcriptional reprogramming for disease modeling and regeneration."

What are your research interests? What are you working on?
I study how cell fates are determined in the airway, focusing on motile ciliated cells in the mouse. I am particularly interested in how airway stem cells, which give rise to ciliated cells, are transcriptionally defined.

Was there something specific about the Stem Cell Biology meeting that drew you to apply?
Initially, meeting speakers Brigid Hogan and Jayaraj Rajagopal - who both work on airway stem cells - drew me to attend the meeting. However, I was also excited to learn about novel methods for enhancing cell reprogramming. 

What is your key takeaway from the meeting?
Single cell transcriptional profiling is a powerful tool for tracking reprogramming and differentiation (but should not be used to infer lineage relationships).

If someone curious in attending a future iteration of Stem Cell Biology meeting asked you for feedback or advice on it, what would you tell him/her?
This is an intimate, small meeting that will allow you to interact with most of the presenters over the week. I found it to be much more rewarding than larger stem cell meetings.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
The CSHL campus is beautiful to explore in the downtime between sessions. I also really enjoyed my interactions with the other attendees.

Thank you to Semil for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course – go here.