Roger Pedersen

Biography

  Roger A. Pedersen received an A.B. (with distinction) in biology from Stanford University in 1965 and a Ph.D. in biology from Yale University in 1970. He did postdoctoral work in mammalian embryology at Johns Hopkins University. In 1971, he began a research program in mammalian reproductive and developmental genetics at the University of California, San Francisco, where he explored for three decades issues of developmental potency, fate and the influence of the environment on embryonic development. That work, together with clinical service directing the UCSF in vitro fertilisation laboratory during the 1990s, led him to studies of human embryos and stem cells. In early 2001, his laboratory generated two of the human embryonic stem cell lines named on the so-called President’s list, which became eligible in late 2001 for U.S. Government funding. By then, Pedersen had relocated to the University of Cambridge in the UK, where he continues his research on human embryonic stem cells as Professor of Regenerative Medicine and Director of the Cambridge Centre for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine.

Research Interest