Professor Elena Matsa has expertise in induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) biology and cell therapy. Having graduated with a BSc in Biochemistry and Genetics from the University of Nottingham and MSc in Human Molecular Genetic from Imperial College London, she completed a PhD in Stem Cell Biology at the University of Nottingham. From 2012 to 2017 she was a postdoctoral fellow and Instructor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she used iPSC to model human disease and cell-drug interactions. Since 2017, Professor Matsa has held several roles in industry including a Director position at Ncardia, a company specializing on iPSC-based disease modelling, and drug discovery and safety assessment. Throughout her career, Professor Matsa has used state-of-the-art technologies for next-generation sequencing, genome editing, high throughput automated characterisation of iPSC-derivatives such as skeletal muscle cells, neurons, macrophages and hematopoietic stem cells, and high throughput screening to advance new therapeutic products towards the clinic. In her most recent role as Senior Vice President in Cell Therapy Research at Cellistic, Professor Matsa strengthened the leadership team providing expertise and strategic guidance on iPSC biology and bioreactor-based iPSC specification towards immune cell types, such as T-regulatory cells (Treg), Natural Killer (NK) cells, and T-cells. Professor Matsa has expertise and experience in a broad array of functions essential to successful allogeneic cell therapy manufacturing, and her work has been published in Cell Stem Cell, Nature Medicine, Science Translational Medicine and the European Heart Journal, among others. Her current research at UCC and NIBRT focuses on improvements in purity, yield, and reproducibility of iPSC-based cell therapy manufacturing