James A. Thomson received his PhD in molecular biology in 1988 from the University of Pennsylvania. Three years prior to that, he received a VMD from the same school. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Illinois, graduating with a BSc in biophysics in 1981. Thomson has received numerous awards over the past 10 years, including the Wilson S. Stone Memorial Award for Biomedical Research (2001) and the Lois Pope Award Annual LIFE International Research Award (2002). He has published nearly 50 articles in publications such as Science, Developmental Biology, and Nature Biotechnology. He is currently active on several research fronts. Among his ongoing projects is one aimed at exploring "the therapeutic potential of ES cell-derived dopamine neurons in a rat model of Parkinson's disease following transplantation" (funded by the National Institutes of Health), and another that seeks to "derive trophoblast cell lines from human embryonic stem cells, and explore transcriptional control of the determination of the trophectoderm and trophoblast lineages." The latter project was organized by the March of Dimes.