スピーカー紹介

Georg Halder is Professor of Genetics at the University of Leuven and the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) in Belgium. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Basel in Switzerland under the guidance of Walter Gehring (1996), where he showed that the Pax6 gene acts as a master regulator of eye development in Drosophila. As a postdoctoral fellow with Sean Carroll at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (1996-2000) he studied the development and evolution of wings in Drosophila and butterflies. Prior to his current position, Dr. Halder was a faculty at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston Texas (2000-2012).

Dr. Halder has a long-standing interest in organ growth control, regeneration, and tissue homeostasis. His laboratory was instrumental in the discovery and elucidation of the Hippo pathway in Drosophila and in the characterization of upstream regulators of the Hippo pathway such as the NF2 tumor suppressor, mechanical forces, and cell polarity. His group continues to use Drosophila as a model system where they conduct sophisticated genetic screens to discover novel mechanisms of growth control. Dr. Halder has recently extended his investigations to the mouse liver, where he studies organ regeneration and tumorigenesis.