Sean J. Morrison is the Director of the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern and is the Mary McDermott Cook Chair in Pediatric Genetics as well as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Morrison laboratory studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate the function of stem cells and cancer cells in the nervous and hematopoietic systems. The laboratory is particularly interested in the mechanisms that regulate stem cell self-renewal and stem cell aging, as well as the role these mechanisms play in cancer. Dr. Morrison obtained his B.Sc. in biology and chemistry from Dalhousie University (1991), then completed a Ph.D. in immunology at Stanford University (1996), and a postdoctoral fellowship in neurobiology at Caltech (1999). From 1999 to 2011, Dr. Morrison was a Professor at the University of Michigan where he Directed their Center for Stem Cell Biology. Dr. Morrison was a Searle Scholar (2000-2003), was named to Technology Review Magazine's list of 100 young innovators (2002), received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2003), the International Society for Hematology and Stem Cell's McCulloch and Till Award (2007) the American Association of Anatomists Harland Mossman Award (2008), and a MERIT Award from the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Morrison has also been active in public policy issues surrounding stem cells. He has twice testified before Congress and was a leader in the successful "Proposal 2" campaign to protect stem cell research in Michigan's state constitution.