Heiko Wurdak PhD

Dr. Wurdak received training in biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics during his undergraduate studies at the Technical University, Darmstadt, Germany. After completing their Diploma in biology, he joined the laboratory of Professor Lukas Sommer at ETH Zurich as a doctoral student. Dr. Wurdak’s PhD work involved lineage tracing of neural stem cell populations, phenotypic analysis of tissues & stem cell derivatives in vivo, and cell signalling studies. He demonstrated that neural crest stem cell-specific ablation of TGF-beta signalling results in developmental malformations reminiscent of a congenital disease termed DiGeorge syndrome. Moreover, he found that TGFbeta signalling is implicated in eye and midbrain development.

In 2006, Dr. Wurdak was awarded the ETH Zurich outstanding dissertation award and became an EMBO (and subsequently AACR) postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Peter G. Schultz at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), La Jolla, USA. He studied small molecules that regulate the fate of somatic and tumour stem cells of the central nervous system and gained comprehensive experience in interdisciplinary research identifying factors that cause differentiation of both brain tumour and embryonic stem cells through large-scale genomic and chemical screens. He also characterized small molecule-directed adult neurogenesis and neural stem cell fate. In 2011, Dr. Wurdak started his independent academic career at Leeds as a 'Senior Translational Research (tenure-track) Fellow'. He received the MRC New Investigator grant and EU/FP7 Marie Curie Career Re-integration award in 2012 and established the 'Stem Cell and Brain Tumour Group'. Since 2016, Dr Wurdak holds a lecturer position at the University of Leeds.