Dr. Elsa Abranches joined the UK Stem Cell Bank team in December 2015 as a Senior Stem Cell Biologist. In January 2019, Dr. Elsa was appointed Group Leader of the Section of Stem Cell Biology and Director of the UK Stem Cell Bank. 

Her primary focus is developing and delivering a programme of research and development that assures the quality of both research and clinical grade human pluripotent stem cell lines. Her areas of interest include understanding how gene regulatory networks are assembled, how they function to sustain proper cell fate decisions and how to use this information to achieve efficient, reproducible & cost-effective expansion of human pluripotent stem cell lines.

Dr. Elsa Abranches graduated in 2001 from the Technical University of Lisbon in Chemical Engineering. She was awarded her PhD in the field of Stem Cell Biotechnology where she worked with mouse embryonic stem cells to optimize stem cell growth in bioreactors. She then worked as a post-doctoral researcher initially in the field of neural differentiation and subsequently on self-renewal and pluripotency regulation of embryonic stem cells.