Two students successfully defended their PhD dissertations this December. Kevin Keller, a graduate of Cornell University, presented his defense on "Modulating the transcriptional activity of beta-catenin during osteogenic differentiation of embryonic stem cells". Ivann Martinez, who received his Bachelor's degree from California State University at Long Beach, presented a seminar entitled "Novel Image-Based Analysis of Bone Teratogenesis Using Human Embryonic Stem Cell Model". Both graduate students are in the Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology Graduate Program at UCR and both used stem cells in their research. Kevin and Ivann were mentored by Dr. Nicole zur Nieden of the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience.

Congratulations to both Kevin and Ivann!

Kevin Keller

Ivann Martinez