2026 RIG Speakers

May 20, 2026

Alessia Brix, Postodoctoral Researcher, Pistocchi Lab, University of Milan, Italy
“Modelling JAK2-driven myelofibrosis: zebrafish as a tool to uncover drug resistance mechanisms”
Alessia Brix is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Medical Biotechnology and Translational Medicine at University of Milan. Her research focuses on the generation of zebrafish models of human diseases, with a particular interest in disorders associated with inflammation and immune-hematologic dysfunction.

Wilson Gomarga, PhD student, Zon Lab, Boston Children's Hospital, USA
“Developmental Hematopoietic Progenitor Switching Drives Lifelong Hematopoiesis and Is Disrupted in Telomere Disease”
Wilson is a fifth-year graduate student in the Zon Lab at the Harvard Medical School/Boston Children's Hospital. He’s interested in blood research at the intersection of clonality and marrow disorders.

Stephanie Grainger, PI, Van Andel Institute, USA
“Wnt you thought you knew about Wnt signaling and the hematopoietic stem cell niche”
Dr. Stephanie Grainger is an authority on the biological underpinnings of how stem cells develop, and how these processes can go awry during cancer. She earned her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Medicine from the University of Ottawa, where she investigated the role of Cdx transcription factors in intestinal development. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the labs of Dr. David Traver and Dr. Karl Willert at University of California, San Diego. Her research during this time sought to understand the role of Wnt signaling in hematopoietic stem cell development — work that she continued as an assistant professor at San Diego State University. During this time, she discovered a novel stage of hematopoietic stem cell development, which is driven by a specific Wnt cue. Furthermore, she discovered a novel mechanism of Wnt signal regulation. In 2021, Dr. Grainger joined Van Andel Institute’s Department of Cell Biology.