Ken Poss is Director of Regenerative Biology at Morgridge Institute and Professor of Cell and Regenerative Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (arriving end of 2024). He received his B.A. in Biology from Carleton College and his Ph.D. in Biology from MIT for research with Susumu Tonegawa. Dr. Poss was a postdoctoral fellow with Mark Keating at the University of Utah and Boston Children’s Hospital. From 2003-2024, he led his research program at Duke investigating zebrafish models of regeneration, where he served as James B. Duke Professor of Regenerative Biology and Head of the Duke Regeneration Center. Poss discovered heart regeneration in zebrafish, establishing an important natural model of robust cardiac repair, and his lab has identified key mechanisms of tissue regeneration in this animal model. Recent work from his lab has developed live imaging approaches to regeneration and has discovered regulatory sequences that control regeneration programs, named tissue regeneration enhancer elements.
Poss received a BA in Biology from Carleton College in 1992 and a PhD in Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998. He was a Pew Scholar and an HHMI Early Career Scientist, and he received the Merit Award from American Heart Association, and the Williams Faculty Research Prize and the Distinguished Faculty Award from Duke University Medical School. Poss was founding President of the International Society for Regenerative Biology.
