George Daley is Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, and Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. A former Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) from 2007-2008, his lab works on the biology and clinical application of stem cells, with a particular focus on hematopoiesis. He was awarded the Public Service Award at the ISSCR 2017 meeting in Boston, where we caught up with him to discuss his move from the lab to the clinic and back again, his quest to derive human hematopoietic stem cells in vitro, and his advocacy for science in uncertain political times.