Out of chaos, we seek order. In this picture, a single cluster of human pluripotent stem cell-derived neural stem cells has been allowed to randomly differentiate in culture for 1 month. Just by analyzing cell morphology, one can see numerous different neural cell types that arise from an initially ‘homogenous’ population of neural stem cells. In the SCBRM lab, we seeks to understand, re-engineer, and control the factors within the in vitro cellular microenvironment that generate such chaos so that one day we can precisely control neural stem cell fate both in vitro and in vivo.