Brittany Meyer visited John Burroughs School in Ladue, MO, on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, upon invitation of our very own Coco Bland (currently a junior at Burroughs). Brittany told the members of Burroughs’ Biomedical Club about her scientific journey, life as a biomedical scientist at WashU, and our studies of human embryo development.
Thanks Brittany for inspiring the next generation and Coco for organizing!
The Theunissen lab was well-represented at the joint retreat of the Center of Regenerative Medicine, Department of Developmental Biology, and Program in Developmental, Stem Cell, and Regenerative Biology, which took place at the beautiful Missouri Botanical Garden on September 15, 2026.
Highlights include Richard Yin’s fabulous talk on his exciting collaboration with Dr. CK Chen’s laboratory, Peiheng Liu’s award-winning picture of a human post-implantation blastoid (see above), and poster presentations by Rosa Loewenstein, Peiheng Liu, and Serene Mattis.
Here are some pics from the event:
The Theunissen Lab paid a visit to St. Louis’s famous “Gateway Arch.” We took a tram to the top of this catenary-shaped edifice, which is the tallest memorial in the United States and the tallest stainless steel monument in the world.
Afterwards, we enjoyed a meal overlooking Busch Stadium, the ballpark of the St. Louis Cardinals, in celebration of Yufan Wang’s visit to our lab from Peking University.
Kyoung-mi Park succesfully defended her PhD thesis, titled “Rapid Induction of Blastoid-Competent Naïve Human Pluripotent Stem Cells and Their Application to Investigate BAF Complex Function During Early Lineage Specification” on Monday, 13, July 2026.
Kyoung will be leaving the lab shortly and taking up a postdoc position at NIH. Congratulations Dr. Park and good luck in your new endeavors!
Here are a few more pics from her thesis defense:
We received a visit from Dr. Ragnheidur “Heida” Gudjonsdottir from Professor Karuna Sampath‘s lab at the University of Warwick. Heida studies regulators of extraembryonic development in zebrafish and is examining their functional conservation using human trophoblast models in collaboration with our lab.
Heida presented on her exciting preliminary studies in the Sampath Lab and we enjoyed a St. Louis burger together:
