MAGDALENA ZERNICKA-GOETZ | 2022 NOMIS Awardee

Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz is the Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech; US) and professor of stem cell biology and development at the University of Cambridge (UK). The NOMIS Award is enabling her to illuminate the journey of an embryo from a fertilized single cell to a complex structure with multiple cell types and to discover the key pathways and events that set the stage for proper development. Zernicka-Goetz’s research will recreate and reveal a period of human development—the beginning of life—that has been entirely inaccessible until now and could lead to clinical interventions for many diseases, from developmental disorders to infertility.

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THOMAS A. RANDO | 2022 NOMIS Awardee

Thomas A. Rando is the director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research and professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine and of molecular, cell and developmental biology in the School of Life Sciences, all at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The NOMIS Award is enabling him to investigate stem cell quiescence—a dormant, highly resilient state that enables long-term survival of stem cells. Rando’s research will provide unprecedented detail regarding the molecular regulation of stem cell quiescence as well as molecular insights into a cellular model of the evolutionary trade-off between survival and reproduction, a trade-off that is at the very core of the evolution of species.

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