The ""father of stem cell research,"" UW-Madison professor James Thomson, has agreed to operate a research lab at the University of California-Santa Barbara, according to the Wisconsin Technology Network.
Thomson, who led a team of researchers to isolate the first human embryonic stem cell in 1998, will split his time between UW-Madison and UCSB, spending one month per year in California.
The state of California is a main competitor with Wisconsin for groundbreaking stem cell research after California voters approved spending $3 billion over the next 10 years in support of such research in 2005.
The stem cell program at UCSB recently received $1.2 million in training grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine for stem cell research.
According to the report from WTN, Thomson will be working with a team of four postdoctoral researchers at UCSB.
