Press Release

16 July 2025
Stowers Institute appoints Kristin Bechard as Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Seasoned financial executive joins leadership team to help advance long-term vision.
Read Article
Video
KCTV5, the local CBS affiliate in Kansas City, recently sat down with the Stowers Institute for Medical Research to discuss the extraordinary images captured by NASA’s James Webb Telescope.
Story from Betsy Webster, KCTV5
KCTV5, the local CBS affiliate in Kansas City, recently sat down with the Stowers Institute for Medical Research’s microscopy team and Executive Director, Alejandro Sanchez Aleverado, PhD to discuss the extraordinary images captured by NASA’s James Webb Telescope.
The Stowers team explained that although microscopes and telescopes are not the same, there are parallels between the way the telescope managed to capture such stunning images, and how the microscopy team at Stowers investigates and examines the cells of organisms.
“The key factor that makes the James Webb telescope work is it’s positioning in space where the impact of atmospheric distortion is minimal,” Jay Unruh, Director of Scientific Data, explained. “We deal with very similar things here at the Stowers Institute, in that most of our samples scatter light which distorts the signal. The microscopy and histology departments here at Stowers employ chemical clearing techniques and immerse the samples in special solutions that eliminate those distortions giving a clear picture of the biological signals from complex tissues,” he said.
Stowers scientists do very similar work on a smaller scale using microscopes to study organisms and produce microscopic imaging for scientific research. This helps our investigators make discoveries in their foundational research and apply their findings to study human diseases that do not have cures. These include Alzheimer’s, diabetes, Parkinson’s, cancer, and more.
Unruh added, “Actually, it often intrigues me that a picture of a galaxy billions of light years away will make the news, but a model of how our cells divide millions of times a second, which we showcase here at Stowers, is completely ignored by the general public.”
To read the full article from KCTV5 and watch the video, click here.
Press Release
16 July 2025
Seasoned financial executive joins leadership team to help advance long-term vision.
Read Article
Press Release
14 July 2025
Stowers scientists identify specific genes involved in zebrafish sensory hair cell regrowth, providing new insights that could inform future research into hearing loss treatments
Read Article
In The News
11 July 2025
From KSHB 41, the Stowers Institute in Kansas City is one of the primary beneficiaries of proceeds from the American Century Tournament. Go inside the labs to see the work their scientists are currently pursuing.
Read Article