Speakers

Onur Başak obtained his bachelor’s degree on molecular biology and genetics at the Bilkent University in Ankara, Türkiye, and his PhD in the field developmental neuroscience at the Albert-Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg, Germany. His PhD work – performed at the Max-Planck Institute for Immunobiolgy – focused on genetic identification of functional heterogeneity of neural stem cells during development and in adult. His postdoc at the Hubrecht Institute at the Netherlands focused on extensive use of organoid technologies and generation of knock-in mouse models to decipher somatic stem cell dynamics and a mathematical model of adult neural stem cell dynamics. He also led a team that developed a new organoid technology. 

His group at the translational Neuroscience Department of the University Medical Center Utrecht (supported by an NWO gravitation grant, Parkinson’s Foundation and others) studies the role of epigenetic plasticity in shaping neural cell identity during cortical development. He aims to understand (i) how genome organisation contributes to generation of distinct adult cell types, (ii) how these processes are altered in chromatinopathies and (iii) whether there is an encoded molecular basis of functional diversity in the adult reward system. His group makes extensive use of single cell RNA / multiomic sequencing technologies and data analysis, mouse genetics and human organid models.