Studer, Lorenz

Swiss-born Lorenz P. Studer is founding director of the Sloan Kettering Center for Stem Cell Biology. He is also professor of neuroscience and member of the developmental biology program and the department of neurosurgery at the Weill Cornell graduate school. Additionally, he heads the steering committee of the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative that brings together resources of Sloan Kettering, Weill Cornell medical school, and Rockefeller University.

Studer was hospitalized for a bone infection in his teens, and at around 18, having also lost several close relatives to cancer, he decided to become a doctor. He spent two years at the University of Fribourg and four at the University of Bern. At Bern, he met Christian Spenger, a neurosurgery fellow with a belief that it might be ...