Yosef (Yossi) Buganim is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Ananda Labs, and an HHMI International Research Scholar. He received his undergraduate degrees from Bar-Ilan University, his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and completed his postdoctoral training in stem cell biology and nuclear reprogramming at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT. Buganim pioneered the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) without using the Yamanaka factors and identified a late deterministic phase during cellular reprogramming. His laboratory also pioneered the direct reprogramming of skin cells into placental stem cells (trophoblast stem cells, TSCs) and demonstrated the generation of all three major stem cell types of the early mammalian embryo directly from skin fibroblasts. His work has been recognized with numerous prestigious international and national awards and grants, including the HHMI International Research Scholar Award, the ERC Starting Grant, the EMBO Young Investigator (YIP) Award, the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Award from Science and Science Translational Medicine magazines, the KY Cha Award for Stem Cell Technology, and the Krill Prize from the Wolf Foundation, among others.