User:Sullivanharvard

Stephen Sullivan born 22 February 1974 in Cork, Ireland is a Harvard Stem Cell Research Research Fellow at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, USA.

Sullivan is a graduate of the University of Ireland (B.Sc.) and Dublin University (M.Sc). At the age of 29 he received a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, where he worked under one of the scientists responsible for cloning Dolly the sheep, Dr. Jim McWhir. Here he studied the nuclear reprogramming activities of human and mouse embryonic stem cells. He developed and optimised a system for studying nuclear reprogramming in whole cell hybrids (an alternative approach to conventional nuclear transfer). He discovered that cell cycle stage of both target and reprogramming cells are important for nuclear reprogramming in cell hybrids.

Subsequently he worked under Professor Azim Surani, director of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute at Cambridge University, studying the epigenetic changes associated with reprogramming in primordial germ cells. Here as part of a team of researchers he showed sex chromosome constitution does not effect imprinting mechanisms in primordial germ cells. In 2005 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.

He currently works with Professor Kevin Eggan at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute elucidating the epigenetic mechamisms underpinned nuclear reporgramming. He was a speaker alongside Dame Anne McLaren at the Activated Egg Symposium hosted by the Bedford Research Foundation in October 2005 and is due to address the National Youth Form on Medicine at Babson College, Boston in July 2006.

Presently he is editing a book called "Human embryonic stem cells: a practical handbook" for John Wiley and Sons. This will be published in 2007.