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Ben Paylor

Ben Paylor completed a Bachelor of Medical Science at the University of Western Ontario, which included a 1-year research exchange to Umea in Northern Sweden. Following his Bachelors, he completed a 2-year Masters of Philosophy in Cardiovascular Biology and Medicine at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Experimental Medicine program under the supervision of Dr. Fabio Rossi at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on understanding the role of tissue-resident mesenchymal progenitors in repair processes of the heart. Outside of science, Ben is an avid pianist and tennis player, as well as being very interested in the field of science communication and policy.  The writer and director of several award-winning science films, Ben is also the co-founder and director of InfoShots (www.infoshots.com), a science-based animation studio that is currently producing the Stem Cell Network's StemCellShorts series. Ben is the Chair of the Trainee Communications Committee at the Stem Cell Network, sits on the National Advisory Committee of the high school outreach program StemCellTalks and is a 2012/13 Action Canada fellow.

Posts by: Ben

Right Turn: Seeing the potential of retinal stem cells

> The well known expression that “the eyes are the gateway to the soul” has tragic connotations in the context of retinal disease. Rhetoric aside, the potential for regenerative medicine to improve our ability to treat ocular disease and injury makes it an exciting area of stem cell research. It is also one that has […]

Right Turn: New StemCellShorts illuminates cancer stem cells

> Just over one year ago, we launched the pilot phase of an animation project titled StemCellShorts here on Signals blog. Funded by a Stem Cell Network Public Outreach Award, the project was very much an experiment for us to see what would happen when you tasked a team of talented creatives, expert faculty and […]

Right Turn: No passport required for new animation on stem cell tourism

> Following the initial success of our award-winning StemCellShorts animation project, we are happy to launch the next video in the series. This video features Prof. Timothy Caulfield narrating a response to the question: “What is stem cell tourism?” We were lucky to be able to record the narration with Tim in the idyllic Rocky […]

The scientific pursuit of eternal youth

> “I resolve to not get any older.” This may seem like a somewhat outlandish New Year’s resolution, a desire more grounded in the realm of science fiction than science itself. But a growing group working in the field of biogerontology would argue that it is not. I was able to get an update on […]

Cardiac regenerative medicine update from the World Stem Cell Summit

> Just over two years ago I wrote about early reports from Dr. Roberto Bolli et al.’s SCIPIO trial running out of the University of Louisville in collaboration with the Harvard Medical School. Since this time, much has happened in the realm of cell therapy to treat ischemic cardiomyopathy and I was able to get […]