The Next Chapter: Future Directions for Biomedical Research

Sections

• Moderators
• Welcome Session
• The State of Research
• New Faculty Showcase
• Future Directions

Moderators

Dr. Geoffrey W. Abbott earned his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of London in 1997, followed by postdoctoral research at Yale University School of Medicine. He was made a tenured full professor at Weill-Cornell Medical College in 2011, and soon afterwards moved to University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, where he is now Professor in Physiology & Biophysics, and Vice Dean for Basic Science Research and Academic Affairs. Funded by multiple NIH institutes, Dr. Abbott currently studies potassium channel modulation by ancillary subunits, solute transporters, neurotransmitters, metabolites, synthetic drugs, and herbal medicines. In 2022 he was awarded a Samueli Scholarship for his molecular mechanistic research in botanical ethnomedicine, and in 2023 the Athalie Clarke Achievement Award for Integrative Health Research. In 2024 and 2025, ScholarGPS ranked him in the top 0.05% of all scholars worldwide and #1 in the field of potassium channel research, for his lab’s discoveries in the past 5 years of novel and unexpected forms of potassium channel modulation.

Eric Vilain, MD, PhD, is the Vice Dean for Clinical Research, the Associate Vice Chancellor of Scientific Affairs for Health Affairs, the Director of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, and a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine. His laboratory explores the genetics of rare conditions with a specific interest in sex differences in health and diseases, and in differences of sex development (DSD) for which he has identified a large number of novel genes and genetic variants. He leads the NIH-funded GREGoR consortium and the Southern California Undiagnosed Disease Network (UDN), both aiming at improving the diagnostic processes and yield of rare conditions. He leads the DSD Translational Research Network, a large (15 clinical sites) network dedicated to improving the care of individuals with a DSD. He has also developed a global health program for rare congenital diseases, including DSD, in Africa. He has published extensively, more than 250 articles, in the fields of genetics, sex development and endocrinology. Dr. Vilain earned his medical degree from the Paris Children’s Hospital Necker, and his PhD from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. He is a fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and a longstanding advisor to the International Olympic Committee on Hyperandrogenism in Athletes.

Welcome Session: State of the School

Michael J. Stamos, MD, has served as dean of the UC Irvine School of Medicine since 2016. Under his leadership, the school has risen in national research rankings and continues with the highest accreditation possible from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education/Association of American Medical Colleges. In fiscal year 2025, UC Irvine received $644 million in research awards, with over $377 million credited to the School of Medicine faculty. Additionally, annual philanthropic contributions have skyrocketed from under $25 million in 2016 to over $100 million in fiscal years 2024 and 2025. Dr. Stamos has also provided leadership for the development of the UCI Health – Irvine medical campus, which aims to expand critical medical services for south OC. Dean Stamos was born in Miami, Florida and received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He completed his surgery internship and residency at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center in Miami, Florida, and received additional fellowship training at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, Louisiana. Before UCI, he served on the faculty at UCLA, working primarily at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center as a clinician and division chief for 11 years. In 2002, he moved to UCI and in 2010, he assumed the leadership role as chair of the Department of Surgery. In 2016, he was appointed dean of the UC Irvine School of Medicine.

The State of Research: A Report from the UC Irvine Vice Chancellor for Research

Dr. Anderson obtained her PhD in Biology/Neuroscience at UC Irvine. After post-doctoral positions at UC Irvine and Harvard, she began her faculty position at UC Irvine in 2001, serving as associate and then interim director of the UCI Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center from 2013-2017, and director from 2017-2025. Last year, she was named UC Irvine’s Vice Chancellor for Research. She has been recognized as an OC Metro honoree and received a UC Irvine Chancellor’s award for research mentorship. Dr. Anderson’s research focuses on a combination of discovery biology and identifying translational neuroscience strategies for spinal cord injury and central nervous system disease. This research has identified novel roles for innate immune molecules in neural stem cell survival, proliferation, quiescence, fate, and migration. Dr. Anderson’s research has led to new clinical strategies for neurological disease and injury. Pre-clinical/translational work from her laboratory enabled an FDA-approved phase I trial of human neural stem cells in Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD), and a phase I/II clinical trial for human neural stem cells in spinal cord injury. Her laboratory is currently working towards bringing a second cell therapy to clinical trial for chronic cervical spinal cord injury.

New Faculty Showcase

Professor LoTempio’s research career spans wet and dry labs as well as policy and bioethics. He holds a BS in Biochemistry (distinction) from the University of Rochester and a PhD in Genomics and Bioinformatics from the George Washington University. He completed postbaccalaureate training at the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute. During his doctoral program, he was awarded a Fulbright Schuman (EU) fellowship for study at the United Nations University in Bruges and Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna. He completed an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Fellowship in bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research program at the University of California, Irvine combines rigorous bioinformatics and empirical bioethics to expand our understanding of the human genome, participant understanding of data sharing, general data science, and how humans interact with artificial intelligences. 

Dr. Slobogean is Professor and Research Director for Clinical Trials in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Director of the Master of Science program in Biomedical and Translational Science at the University of California, Irvine. His clinical practice focuses on the surgical management of complex extremity fractures and polytrauma patients. Dr. Slobogean’s research program focuses on large multicenter clinical trials and clinician-scientist mentorship. He is the co-founder of the Center for Orthopaedic Injury Research & Innovation, a national mentorship and research design service center available to early-career investigators. In the past 5 years, his national cohort of mentees have received >$15M in federal funding to lead multicenter clinical trials.

Dr. Kimberly Gokoffski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology. As a board-certified Neuro-Ophthalmologist, her clinical practice centers on caring for patients with afferent disease (blindness from optic neuropathies including optic neuritis) while her surgical practice focuses on treating patients with double vision from efferent disease (strabismus). She leads a federally funded, multidisciplinary research consortium whose goal is to develop engineered solutions for blindness. Specifically, she is pioneering electric field stimulation into a strategy to enable regenerating retinal neurons to reconnect with intended targets in the brain. She currently heads a section of the ARPA-H initiative to enable whole eye transplantation to cure blindness. Additionally, her group is using electric field stimulation to increase neuro-plasticity in the visual cortex and reverse blindness from amblyopia, a childhood disease of blindness.

Momoko Watanabe earned a B.S. in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2006. She then pursued her doctoral studies at UC Irvine, where she studied the mechanisms of forebrain patterning. Building on her excitement and experience with neural development and stem cell biology, she did her first post-doctoral training at RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan, to focus on the three-dimensional culture of cerebral cortex structures, so-called brain organoids, generated from hPSCs. She then moved back to the U.S. and joined UCLA. Her project focused on the development of highly efficient and reproducible cerebral organoid methods to investigate the origins of cortical neural circuits and model neurodevelopmental disorders, including the Congenital Zika Syndrome. Building upon these accomplishments, she successfully received a NIH K99/R00 grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). She was recruited to UC Irvine as a part of Faculty Hiring for Leveraged Research Excellence (FHLRE) “Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering” and started as an Assistant Professor in the Anatomy and Neurobiology Department in 2020. She is very excited to contribute to a synergistic interdepartmental concentration in stem cell-based engineering.

Alvin Yu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, Irvine. As a Ruth L. Kirschstein postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, he studied the molecular basis for replication in viruses, including HIV and SARS-CoV-2. In his PhD at Johns Hopkins University, he studied the physical and chemical basis for neural activity in glutamate receptor ion channels. He earned his B.S. in Physics from Caltech. He received a K99/R00 grant from the National Institutes of Health. His research interests include developing and applying multiscale simulations to provide physical insight into living systems, and leads the Computational Biophysics Group, which uses theory and computation to understand biological phenomena that have a direct impact on human health.

Future Directions: Pathways to Accelerate Bench to Bedside Research

Dr. Cummings is an internationally recognized expert on animal models of acute and chronic traumatic brain injury (TBI), spinal cord injury (SCI), neuroinflammation, and repeat-mild concussion. He contributed to the preclinical data package that led to FDA approval for a fetal-derived human neural stem cell trial (fNSCs) in the myelination disorder Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD) and SwissMedic approval for the treatment of chronic thoracic spinal cord injuries using fNSCs. He is PI on a CIRM Translational Research – Therapeutic (TRAN1) award for the use of human embryonic-stem cell-derived neural stem cells (hNSCs) as a therapy for contusion-induced traumatic brain injury (TBI). He held a pre-IND with the FDA for Shef-6 hNSC for TBI in December of 2025 and is currently seeking funding to manufacture the final cell product at UCI’s cGMP manufacturing facility. He is also investigating biomarkers for concussion and engineered stem cells to reduce neuroinflammation resulting from trauma. He will present on the challenges that basic science faculty face in bringing new discoveries to trial and the resources available to support these endeavors. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and has been awarded more than $50 million in funding.

Dr. Chen is a Professor at the Brunson Center for Translational Vision Research (BCTVR) in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. His research integrates genetics, genomics, model systems, and bioinformatics to identify the genetic causes of human visual disorders, uncover their underlying molecular mechanisms, and develop targeted therapeutic strategies. In addition, Dr. Chen leads the development of the Version 1 single-cell atlas reference for the human eye as part of the Human Cell Atlas Project.

Brian M. Paegel (rhymes with “bagel”) is a Professor and Associate Dean of Research in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, with courtesy appointments in Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He earned his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Duke University and his PhD from UC Berkeley, where he contributed to the Human Genome Project, focusing on DNA sequencing technology. As an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at Scripps Research, he developed microfluidic automated systems for the continuous evolution of catalytic RNAs and received the NIH Pathway to Independence Award. In 2009, Paegel joined the chemistry faculty at Scripps Florida, where he was recognized with both the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and an NSF CAREER Award for his work in reaction miniaturization. Scripps granted him tenure in 2017 in recognition of his contributions to DNA-encoded library synthesis and analysis technology development. In 2019, Paegel returned to the UC system, where his laboratory continues to advance synthesis and screening platforms aimed at supporting translational research and democratizing drug discovery. He has cofounded five biotech start-up companies.

Peter D. Chang is a radiologist physician and full-stack software engineer with over 15 years of experience having developed a total of eight FDA-cleared and CE-mark certified tools used in thousands of hospitals around the world. At the University of California Irvine, Dr. Chang is an Associate Professor and founding Director of the UCI Center for Applied AI Research, a multi-specialty initiative to develop and integrate artificial intelligence technology across the healthcare system. He is also co-founder of multiple AI startups including most recently Avicenna.ai, a company focused on deep learning for medical imaging diagnosis, and collaborates closely with industry partners from Nvidia, Amazon, and Canon Medical. Dr. Chang leverages his unique cross-disciplinary clinical, academic, and industry perspective to provide insights at the intersection of healthcare and AI technology.

The Marazzi Laboratory studies epigenetic and chromatin-mediated control of gene expression. We are interested in how mutations cause infection, inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. We combined in vitro and in vivo work (from atoms to organisms) to understand molecular mechanisms and genome-wide effects of known and novel candidate genes that cause juvenile forms of disease.

Joshua D. Grill, PhD, is the Carla Liggett and Arthur S. Liggett, MD, Endowed Chair, in honor of Frank M. LaFerla at the University of California Irvine. He is a Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Neurobiology and Behavior, director of UCI Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND), and co-director of UC Irvine’s NIA-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Dr. Grill has published more than 150 scholarly articles, and is a regarded leader in Alzheimer’s disease research on clinical trials, recruitment and retention, and biomarker disclosure. He holds numerous prominent national leadership positions, including co-leader of the Recruitment Engagement and Retention Unit and the Internal Ethics Committee for the NIA-funded Alzheimer’s Clinical Trial Consortium (ACTC). He is the co-director of the Institute on Methods and Protocols for Advancement of Clinical Trials in ADRD (IMPACT-AD), a program funded by NIA and the Alzheimer’s Association to train the next generation of Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementia trialists. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Maria Shriver’s Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement and for Hilarity for Charity, founded by Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen.