Meet the Vice Chancellor for Research

Aileen Anderson, Ph.D.

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Anderson obtained her B.S. in Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her Ph.D. in Biology/Neuroscience at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). After post-doctoral positions at UCI and Harvard, she began her faculty position at UCI in 2001, serving as associate and then interim director of the UCI Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center from 2013-2017, and director from 2017-2025. She has been recognized as an OC Metro honoree and UCI mid-career research award honoree, received a UCI Chancellor's award for research mentorship, and been recognized as a distinguished faculty member for outstanding contributions to bioengineering by UC Riverside as part of her commitment to translational work for spinal cord injury. Dr. Anderson serves on science advisory boards for Wings for Life and Mission Connect nonprofit foundations, as well as at the Houston Methodist Center for Neural Regeneration.

Dr. Anderson's own research program focuses on a combination of discovery biology and identifying translational neuroscience strategies for spinal cord injury and central nervous system disease. Dr. Anderson's work investigates the intrinsic and extrinsic factors defining neural stem cell behavior both in vitro and after transplantation into the spinal cord. This research has identified novel roles for innate immune molecules in neural stem cell survival, proliferation, quiescence, fate, and migration. Moreover, she has shown that these molecules play a role in the capacity of neural stem cells to induce repair after transplantation, as well as in the maintenance of glioma stem cells and progression of glioblastoma. In parallel with this work, Dr. Anderson's laboratory studies biomaterial scaffolds as a potential therapy to enable axonal regeneration and re-connect damaged neural circuits after spinal cord injury. Together, Dr. Anderson's research has led to new clinical strategies for neurological disease and injury. Indeed, pre-clinical and translational work from her laboratory enabled an FDA-approved phase I trial of human neural stem cells in the myelination disorder, Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD), and a phase I/II clinical trial for human neural stem cells in thoracic spinal cord injury. Her laboratory is currently working towards bringing a second cell therapy forward to clinical trial for chronic cervical spinal cord injury