Congratulations to Dr. Sean Morrison, who has been named president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. Dr. Morrison, the highly respected director of the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (“CRI”), is a visionary leader who is building one of the world’s leading medical research groups to discover the causes and cures of pediatric diseases. His influence is worldwide, and he will officially begin leading the ISSCR for a one-year term on June 27.

Dr. Morrison, who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and holds the Mary McDermott Cook Chair in Pediatric Genetics at UT Southwestern in addition to serving as director of the CRI, has been actively involved with ISSCR since its inception in 2002 and has served in leadership roles since 2004. The Society, with nearly 4,000 members from more than 55 countries, is the pre-eminent transnational, cross-disciplinary science-based organization dedicated to stem cell research.

Both Children’s and UT Southwestern are indeed fortunate to claim Dr. Morrison as a faculty member. When Dr. Morrison relocated his research to Dallas in 2011, his challenge was to eventually build the CRI into a research powerhouse of 15 laboratories and some 150 researchers working in areas that will impact patient health and lead to new discoveries and strategies to treat disease. His own laboratory, the Hamon Laboratory for Stem Cell and Cancer Biology, focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate the function of stem cells and cancer cells.

Dr. Morrison is superbly suited for his new role. Just as his leadership has already benefited Children’s and UT Southwestern, his presidency at ISSCR will undoubtedly lead to more collaboration, more understanding, and more discoveries in the rapidly expanding field of stem cells.

To read more about this important appointment, please visit https://give.childrens.com/latest-news/latest-news-entry/sean-j.-morrison-assumes-leadership-of-the-isscr.

To learn more about the CRI, please go to https://give.childrens.com/about-us/why-help/cri/.