This year the annual Symposium sponsored by the Inland Empire Stem Cell Consortium was held at California State University at San Bernardino. The Symposium was opened by comments from Dr. Jeff Thompson followed the President of CSUSB, Dr. Tomas Morales. Dr. Talbot showed a short video that provided a virtual tour of the UCR Stem Cell Core Facility which is shared by labs in the Inland Empire. Kashfia Neherin welcomed all and spoke about the Student Society for Stem Cell Research. Dr. Nicole Bournias, organizer of the Symposium, gave her opening remarks which were followed by talks by Aaron Cipriano, Maricela Maldonado, Wanqui Chen, graduate students in laboratories at UCR and Loma Linda University.

A highlight of the Symposium was the Keynote address given by Dr. Jill Helms from Stanford University who presented an invigorating and motivational talk on regenerative medicine. After lunch talks were presented by Tania Fuentes from Loma Linda, Nicole Sparks from UCR, and Salvador Garcia a former CIRM Bridges Intern now working at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Jonathan Bradley closed the Symposium with awards to poster presenters who included Ryan Walden, Michael Ramos and Lauren Antrim, all CIRM Bridges students from CSUSB.

Vendors also participated and demoed a number of interesting new supplies for use in stem cell work.

Next year's Symposium will be held at UCR.
 

Symposium Photos