Celebrate 30 Years of Discovery
Thursday, May 21, 2026

For 30 years, the lab of Deepak Srivastava has advanced discoveries in congenital heart disease, cardiac development, and heart regeneration while training and mentoring a remarkable community of scientists and physicians. Many have gone on to lead research programs around the world, building on the ideas and collaborations that began in the Srivastava Lab.

To celebrate this milestone, join former trainees, collaborators, and current lab members for a day of science talks and conversation. Speakers will share new research spanning cardiac biology and genomics, as well as emerging approaches including artificial intelligence. 

Beyond the science, the event is an opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and mentors who have been part of the Srivastava Lab over the past three decades.

Program

8:15am Continental Breakfast
8:30am Welcome and Introduction
Deepak Srivastava, MD | President, Gladstone Institutes
8:55am Basic and Clinical Science for Congenital Cardiac Outflow Defects
Hiroyuki Yamagishi, MD, PhD | Keio University School of Medicine
9:10am Unraveling the Etiology of Congenital Heart Defects: Insights from Human Genetics and Mouse Models
Vidu Garg, MD | Nationwide Children’s Hospital
9:25am Developmental Mechanisms Underlying Congenital Heart Defects
Irfan Kathiriya, MD, PhD | UC San Francisco
9:40am  Harnessing Small Molecules in Support of Organ Regeneration and Repair
Ildiko Bock-Marquette, MD | University of Pecs Medical School
9:55am  Making Adult Cardiomyocytes
Chulan Kwon, PhD | Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
10:10am 'Sniffing’ Out Alzheimer's Disease: Mechanisms of Olfactory Neurodegeneration
Ankur Saxena, PhD | University of Alabama, Birmingham
10:25am Break
10:45am A General Framework for Understanding Tissue Repair and Fibrosis
Yong Zhao, MD, PhD | Fuwai Henan Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences
11:00am Role of Adventitial Fibroblast in Atherosclerosis
Paul Cheng, MD, PhD | Stanford University School of Medicine
11:15am Origin of the Vertebrate Heartbeat
Vasanth Vedantham, MD, PhD | UC San Francisco
11:30am Panel Discussion
Yen-Sin Ang, PhD | Kopio Bio
Emily Berry, PhD | California State Senate
Kim Cordes Metzler, PhD | Just-Evotec Biologics 
Yvanka de Soysa, PhD | Foreground Capital
Aryé Elfenbein, MD, PhD | Wildtype
Aruna Natarajan, MD, PhD | Georgetown University
Mark White, PhD | A-Alpha Bio
12:00pm Lunch
1:00pm Genetic Influences on Neurodevelopment in Congenital Heart Disease
Sarah Morton, MD, PhD | Harvard Medical School
1:15pm Direct Reprogramming and Regenerative Medicine
Masaki Ieda, MD, PhD | Keio University School of Medicine
1:30pm Decoding and Redirecting Cell Fate for Heart Repair
Li Qian, PhD | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
1:45pm Two Sides of the Same Heart: Regeneration and Cardiac Safety
Tamer Mohamed, PhD | Baylor College of Medicine
2:00pm 10 Years Advancing Cardiac Therapies at Tenaya Therapeutics
Kathy Ivey, PhD | Tenaya Therapeutics
2:15pm Novel Noncanonical Functions of Noncoding RNAs in the Heart
Jidong Fu, PhD | Ohio State University
2:30pm Group Photo and Break
2:50pm Foundational AI Models for Network Biology
Christina Theodoris, MD, PhD | Gladstone Institutes
3:05pm Deep Learning Models Unbiasedly Discover Complex Motif Syntax Employed During Cardiac Differentiation
Casey Gifford, PhD | Stanford University School of Medicine
3:20pm Chromatin Regulation of Cell States in Heart Disease
Michael Alexanian, PhD | Gladstone Institutes
3:35pm Linking Trisomy 21 to Craniofacial Congenital Disorders
Sanjeev Ranade, PhD | Sanford Burnham Prebys Institute
3:50pm Metabolic Rewiring Drives Maladaptive Epigenetic Memory in Macrophages, Promoting Recurrent Heart Failure
Tomohiro Nishino, MD, PhD | Kyoto University
4:05pm Lab Skit


 

About Srivastava Lab

The lab of Deepak Srivastava, MD, began in 1996 at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where Srivastava was a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Molecular Biology. He moved his research group to San Francisco in 2005 to lead the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. Since its founding, the lab has mentored more than 100 trainees, many of whom have gone on to become leaders in their respective fields.

The Srivastava Lab is focused on the gene networks that guide the development of the heart, seeking to understand how aberrations in these pathways can cause congenital heart disease, and how they can use this knowledge to generate new cardiac cells to repair heart damage. One powerful approach they use is creating models of heart disease in a dish by reprogramming human cells from patients carrying mutations in cardiac developmental genes, editing them with CRISPR technology and analyzing changes at the single cell level. This has led them to discover perturbations in pivotal genetic pathways that contribute to disease, and identified the nodes that can be therapeutically targeted to restore heart cells to normal function.

Deepak Srivastava, MD, is president of Gladstone Institutes. He is also the Robert and Linda Mahley Distinguished Professor and a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, and director of the Roddenberry Stem Cell Center. At UC San Francisco, Srivastava is a professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Biochemistry and Biophysics, and is the Wilma and Adeline Pirag Distinguished Professor in pediatric developmental cardiology.

 

Details

Dates
May 21, 2026
Time
8:30am-4:15pm PDT
Location
Mahley Auditorium
Audience
Alumni, Gladstone
Contact(s)



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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At Gladstone, we are committed to providing events and professional development activities that resonate with our community’s diverse members. Our goal is to develop creative programming that encompasses a wide variety of ideas and perspectives to inspire, educate, and engage with everyone within our walls.

We want to effect positive change through our events and activities by providing a platform for discussions on important topics related to increasing diversity and inclusiveness in the sciences.