Knut Woltjen, Ph. D.
Associate Professor
Center for iPS Cell Research and Application
Kyoto University
Kyoto, JAPAN
Dr. Woltjen obtained his B.Sc. Honors in Molecular Genetics from the University of Alberta (1998), and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry. and Molecular Biology (2006) from the University of Calgary, where he developed a gene-targeting vector construction method by recombination. During a postdoctoral fellowship in Medical Genetics in Toronto, he employed the piggyBac transposon in a novel approach to create induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) cells, and served as Manager of the Ontario Human iPS Cell Facility. Dr. Woltjen joined Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) in 2010, and in 2013 was cross-appointed to Kyoto University’s Hakubi Center for Advanced Research as an Associate Professor. Dr. Woltjen employs programmable nucleases in human iPS cells to study genetic variation in development and disease.