TheSE awards were presented at the Inaugural ISRB meeting in Vienna, Austria September 4th, 2023. 

ISRB LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

National Institute for Basic Biology, Japan

Dr. Agata first became interested in tissue regeneration studying lens regeneration as an undergraduate in the 1970’s, and he has been a leader in investigation of regeneration in planarian flatworms for the past three decades. He is recognized for establishing fundamental methodologies in this system, and among other findings his group has identified molecular mechanisms underlying control of brain regeneration and of whole-animal polarity during regeneration. His discoveries, including how positional information is organized and how signaling gradients may act to impart positional values, broadly relate to stem cell and regenerative biology across species. He has made great efforts to advance the field of regenerative biology, and its applied sister field of regenerative medicine, and he has a long history in representation of academic societies and organization of international activities. He has been a dedicated advisor to junior scientists throughout his career, and his mentoring record includes oversight of 33 PhD theses.

ISRB RISING STAR AWARD

Anjali Kusumbe, PhD

University of Oxford

Dr. Kusumbe received her PhD after training with Sharmilla Bapat at National Centre for Cell Science in Pune, India, to study cancer stem cell properties during tumor development. As a postdoctoral fellow with Ralf Adams at Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, she led multiple high-profile studies that identified regulatory effects of vascular tissue on key progenitors of bone and blood. An exciting recent study from her own lab, which she has run at Oxford since 2017, demonstrated the presence of lymphatic vessels in bone, and it described mechanisms by which these cells can control bone and hematopoietic tissue regeneration. Dr. Kusumbe has received many prestigious early career awards, and her innovative program is changing the way we think about bone aging, disease, and regeneration