Robert Lanza, M.D.

"Robert Lanza was taken under the wing of scientific giants such as psychologist B.F. Skinner, immunologist Jonas Salk, and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. His mentors described him as a ‘genius,’ a ‘renegade thinker,’ even likening him to Einstein himself." - US News & World Report, cover story.

Dr. Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Ocata Therapeutics (formerly Advanced Cell Technology), and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He has several hundred publications and inventions, and over 30 scientific books: among them, Principles of Tissue Engineering, which is recognized as the definitive reference in the field. Others include One World: The Health & Survival of the Human Species in the 21st Century (Foreword by President Jimmy Carter), and the Handbook of Stem Cells and Essentials of Stem Cell Biology, which are considered the definitive references in stem cell research. Dr. Lanza received his BA and MD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a University Scholar and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. He was also a Fulbright Scholar, and was part of the team that cloned the world's first early stage human embryos, as well as the first to successfully generate stem cells from adults using somatic-cell nuclear transfer (therapeutic cloning). Lanza's team was the first to clone an endangered species, to demonstrate that nuclear transfer could reverse the aging process, and to generate stem cells using a method that does not require the destruction of human embryos. In October 2014, Dr. Lanza and his colleagues published a paper in the journal The Lancet, providing the first evidence of the long-term safety and possible biologic activity of pluripotent stem cell progeny into humans with any disease.

Lanza has received numerous awards and other recognition, including Top 50 “World Thinkers 2015 (Prospect Magazine); TIME Magazine’s 2014 Time 100 list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World," the 2013 “Il Leone di San Marco Award in Medicine” (Italian Heritage and Culture Committee, along with Regis Philbin, who received the award in Entertainment), a 2010 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Award for “Translating Basic Science Discoveries into New and Better Treatments”; a 2010 “Movers and Shakers” Who Will Shape Biotech Over the Next 20 Years (BioWorld, along with Craig Venter and President Barack Obama); a 2005 Wired magazine "Rave Award" for medicine “For eye-opening work on embryonic stem cells”, and a 2006 Mass High Tech journal “All Star” award for biotechnology for “pushing stem cells’ future”.

Lanza and his research have been featured in almost every media outlet in the world, including all the major TV networks, CNN, TIME, Newsweek, People Magazine, as well as the front pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, among others. Lanza has worked with some of the greatest thinkers of our time, including Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. Lanza worked closely with B.F. Skinner at Harvard University. Lanza and Skinner (the "Father of modern behaviorism") published a number of scientific papers together. He has also worked with Jonas Salk (discoverer of the Polio vaccine) and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard.