Silvia Velasco leads the Neural Stem Cell Laboratory at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI), in Melbourne, Australia. With her team, she is interested in developing pluripotent stem cell-derived 3D organoid models of the human brain to study and advance treatments for neurodevelopmental disorders. Velasco is also a principal investigator at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine (ReNEW), a recently established international collaboration between MCRI, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, that strives to advance a new generation of effective and safe stem cell-driven therapies. Prior to establishing her independent Laboratory, Velasco worked in the group of Professor Paola Arlotta at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, USA, where she established a method for the generation of a highly reliable brain organoid model which has been instrumental to gain mechanistic insights into the cell-type specific developmental and functional defects associated with autism spectrum disorder.