UC Merced Expert 

Few topics in modern medicine hold more hope or generate more controversy than stem cells.  The study of stem cells – how they work, what they can do and how human health may be dramatically affected – is a key focus of medical researchers hoping to discover self-generated remedies to catastrophic illness and injury.  The use of human embryos as a material source for this work has triggered a global debate at the intersection of science, medicine, religion and moral values. 

Pallavicini is an expert on stem-cell development and the host of issues that stand in the path of its full promise.  She can explain the biochemistry at the root of regenerative cell technology and its potential for treatment or cure of cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease and other debilitating afflictions.  She can also provide broad perspective on societal attitudes toward stem-cell research as well as on state, national and global initiatives planned or already under way in this field. This includes California’s own multibillion-dollar effort, approved by voters in 2004 (Proposition 71) but held up in the courts by legal challenges.

An accomplished biomedical researcher and instructor, Pallavicini also can comment on more traditional treatments of cancer and leukemia as well as on tissue transplants. She is widely published and has been a principal speaker at dozens of national and international symposia on biomedical issues. 

She is also a leader in California Teach, a UC systemwide initiative aiming to train more math and science teachers to prepare future generations of Californians to participate in advanced science like her own.

Pallavicini holds a B.S. in biochemistry from UC Berkeley and a Ph. D. in pharmacology from the University of Utah. She was named dean of the School of Natural Sciences at UC Merced in 2002.  Previously, she was a faculty member at UC San Francisco’s Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Radiation Oncology.