PRISM Mentors

Our lab's research lies at the interface of biology, engineering, nanotechnology, and medicine. We develop and apply translational micro/nanotechnologies to study cellular heterogeneity and complex biological systems for single cell analysis and precision medicine.  At this unique nexus, we apply key biological principles to design engineering platforms. Our research philosophy is to apply these platforms to fundamentally understand and address the mechanisms of disease (i.e., cancer, infections). 

We, for the first time, have demonstrated magnetic levitation of living cells and its application to detect minute differences in densities at the single-cell level.  We apply this unique tool to perform ultra-sensitive density measurements, magnetic blueprinting, imaging, sorting and profiling of millions of cells and rare biological materials in seconds in real-time at a single-cell resolution.  For instance, magnetic levitation technology can sort rare circulating tumor markers and cells from patient whole blood  without relying on any markers, tags or antibodies, which cut cross multiple disciplines of magnetics, microfluidics and molecular biology.

Our lab's mission is to bridge the gap between biology, engineering and nanotechnology; to develop simple, inexpensive, easy-to-use, yet, broadly applicable platforms that will change the way in which medicine is practiced as well as how patients are monitored, diagnosed and treated for precision medicine. We apply key biological principles to engineering designs.  Interfacing our unique bioengineering platforms with next-generation sequencing technologies, we aim to understand and answer fundamental questions mainly in cancer biology, antibiotic resistance, and regenerative medicine.

Our focus is to develop new tools and technologies to investigate and fundamentally understand disease and wellness. Our research efforts are summarized as follows:

• Creating new tools and technologies to detect and isolate circulating biological signatures, materials and markers from biological fluids (i.e., circulating tumor cells, circulating tumor emboli, exosomes in blood, urine, and saliva).
• Enabling investigations of these rare biological materials to “decode” the molecular, genetic and proteomics characteristics to better understand the biology of disease, with a special focus on cancer biology and metastasis.
• Detecting antibiotic susceptibility using magnetic levitation. 
• Evolving these technologies into the next generation of applications in antibiotic resistance to eradicate biofilms and resistant microorganisms.
• Exploring self-assembly of single cells under microgravity conditions for bioprinting, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. 

We are seeking open and honest, creative, dedicated, and team-oriented individuals to join our research team. Our lab prioritizes inclusion and diversity to achieve excellence in research and to foster an intellectual climate that is welcoming and nurturing. Two positions are available for energetic, self-driven and passionate postdoctoral fellow candidates.  Applicants are expected to be technically competent in a discipline relevant to our mission and vision.  

Katherine Whittaker Ferrara is a Professor of Radiology and the Division Chief for the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the IEEE, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Biomedical Engineering Society, the World Molecular Imaging Society, the Acoustical Society of America and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. Dr. Ferrara received her Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of California, Davis. Prior to her PhD, Dr. Ferrara was a project engineer for General Electric Medical Systems, involved in the development of early magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound systems. Following an appointment as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Dr. Ferrara served as the founding chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UC Davis. Her laboratory is known for work in molecular imaging and drug delivery.

The research interests of the molecular imaging instrumentation lab are to create novel instrumentation and software algorithms for in vivo imaging of molecular signatures of disease in humans and small laboratory animals. These new cameras efficiently image radiation emissions in the form of positrons, annihilation photons, gamma rays, and/or light emitted from molecular contrast agents that were introduced into the body and distributed in the subject tissues. These contrast agents are designed to target molecular pathways of disease biology and enable imaging of these biological signatures in tissues residing deep within the body using measurements made from outside the body.

The goals of the instrumentation projects are to advance the sensitivity and spatial, spectral, and/or temporal resolutions, and to create new camera geometries for special biomedical applications. The computational modeling and algorithm goals are to understand the physical system comprising the subject tissues, radiation transport, and imaging system, and to provide the best available image quality and quantitative accuracy.

The work involves designing and building instrumentation, including arrays of position sensitive sensors, readout electronics, and data acquisition electronics, signal processing research, including creation of computer models, and image reconstruction, image processing, and data/image analysis algorithms, and incorporating these innovations into practical imaging devices.

The ultimate goal is to introduce these new imaging tools into studies of molecular mechanisms and treatments of disease within living subjects.

The Pitteri laboratory uses mass spectrometry to identify, quantify, and characterize proteins in complex biological and clinical samples.  We are focused on using proteins and their post-translational modifications to better understand biology and to answer clinical problems in health and disease states.  Currently, a main focus of the lab is developing and implementing new methods to study protein glycosylation in cancer.

Department URL:
https://canarycenter.stanford.edu/

The QIAI lab focuses on cutting‐edge research at the intersection of imaging science and biomedical informatics, developing and applying AI methods to large amounts of medical data for biomedical discovery, precision medicine, and precision health (early detection and prediction of future disease). The lab develops novel methods in text and image analysis and AI, including multi-modal and multi-task learning, weak supervision, knowledge representation, natural language processing, and decision theory to tackle the challenges of leveraging medical Big Data. Our exciting work is bridging a spectrum of biomedical domains with multidisciplinary collaborations with top scientists at Stanford as well as with other institutions internationally. The QIAI lab provides a unique multidisciplinary environment for conducing innovative AI-based healthcare research with a strong record of scholarly publication and achievement. Core research topics in the laboratory include: (1) automated image annotation using unsupervised methods of processing associated radiology reports using word embeddings and related methods; (2) developing methods of analyzing longitudinal EMR data to predict clinical outcomes and best treatments, (3) creating multi-modal deep learning models integrating multi-dimensional EMR and other data to discover electronic phenotypes of disease, (4) developing AI models with noisy or sparse labels (weak supervision), and cross-modal, multi-task learning, and observational AI approaches, and (5) developing and implementing algorithms for distributed computation for training deep learning models that leverage multi-institutional data while avoiding the barriers to data sharing.

The PIMed Laboratory has a multi-disciplinary direction and focuses on developing analytic methods for biomedical data integration, with a particular interest in radiology-pathology fusion to facilitate radiology image labeling . The radiology-pathology fusion allows the creation of detailed spatial labels, that later on can be used as input for advanced machine learning, such as deep learning. The recent focus of the lab has been on applying deep learning methods to detect and differentiate aggressive from indolent prostate cancers on MRI using the pathology information (both labels and the image content). Other applications include breast cancer and brain samples. 

Dr. Spielman’s research is in the field of MRI, spectroscopy (MRS), and PET, with a focus on the development of new methods of imaging in vivo metabolism. Current projects include 13C MRS of hyperpolarized substrates for the assessment of glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation in cancer, 1H MRS measurements brain oxidative stress and neurotransmission, and combined PET/MRS studies.  He has focused on a novel array of both acquisition and analysis techniques for use in preclinical and clinical studies.

Associated T32s: Stanford Center for Imaging Training (SCIT), Stanford Molecular Imaging Scholars (SMIS), Stanford Training in Biomedical Imaging Instrumentation (TBI2)

Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Cell biology & microfluidics, UCSF & Stanford

A joint postdoc position between the labs of Wallace Marshall (UCSF) and Sindy Tang (Stanford) is immediately available in the area of single-cell wound healing. The broad question we aim to answer is how the single-celled ciliate Stentor can heal drastic wounds. We are looking for a candidate with a background in cell biology or related fields. This position will allow ample opportunities to learn new techniques including microfluidics for single-cell manipulation and mathematical modeling.

Application
For questions or applications (see below), please feel free to reach out to Prof. Wallace Marshall (wallace.ucsf@gmail.com) or Prof. Sindy Tang (sindy@stanford.edu). To apply, please include a CV (with a publication list) and some detail about your background and interest in the project.

Project description:
Biomechanical mechanisms conferring wound resilience in single-celled organisms
Stentor coeruleus is a large, single-celled ciliate that has remarkable wound healing and regenerative capacity (see Slabodnick et al., Current Bio, 2014 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.10...). It is found in environments that can be subject to high mechanical stresses due to natural flows or predation. The overall goal of this project is to investigate how this organism employs both mechanical and biochemical mechanisms upstream of wounding for wound prevention, as well as downstream of wounding for robust healing from wounds (https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-021-00970-0).

We have sequenced the Stentor genome, and developed tools for molecular manipulation of Stentor gene expression to pave the way to a molecular understanding of Stentor wound response.   This project involves conceptualization of a novel chemical screen to test the role of the cytoskeleton in conferring wound resistance to the cell, and the role of large-scale mechanical force generation in complementing biochemical healing modes to close wounds of increasing severity.

Some questions we ask are: how does Stentor cell mechanics give rise to wound resistance? How do cells respond to shear or other types of stresses? What molecular pathways are important in Stentor wound healing, and are they the same as in other eukaryotes?
The project combines cell biology, microfluidics for precise wounding (see Blauch et al., PNAS 2017 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1705059114), and mechanobiology modeling.

Required Qualifications:
Desired skills for this project include:
• Cell biology
• Chemical screen
• RNAi and genetic transformation
• Past experience with Stentor, other ciliates, or manipulation (e.g., microinjection) of large cells or embryos such as Drosophila
• Mathematical modelling of cellular processes
Candidates proficient in certain skills outlined above will have opportunities to receive training in complementary skill sets.

Required Application Materials:
Your CV with a publication list, and some detail about your background and interest in the project.

We are seeking a talented individual for a research associate position in our multidisciplinary team. Our advanced pediatric MRI research program spans across novel developments in hardware, pulse sequences, machine learning algorithms, image reconstruction methods, and image analysis techniques, all with an integrated clinical translational component. Efforts bridge across multiple departments on the Stanford University campus and UC Berkeley, as well as with Silicon Valley companies. The position offers the opportunity to work with multiple faculty, post-doctoral scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates. Responsibilities include developing novel techniques, contributing to grant proposals, writing and submitting manuscripts, and developing intellectual property.

My research focuses on advanced MRI and PET/MRI techniques and their application to alleviate neurological disease.  I lead an inter-disciplinary team of physicians, graduate and post-doctoral students, and research associates with technical expertise in all the required realms to perform successful advanced imaging studies.  As an active clinical neuroradiologist, I have a strong track record of integrating advanced imaging methods to clinical patients and have published extensively on its value in a wide range of diseases.  During the past several years, I have become convinced that AI generally and deep learning in particular will transform medicine.  Radiology will be fundamentally affected.  In the area of deep learning, I have demonstrated its use to improve MR reconstruction, reduce MR contrast dose and radiation dose, segmentation of brain metastases, and to predict the future.

My lab focuses on translating advanced MRI into clinical practice. In Alzheimer's disease, we are investigating the nature of iron deposition to understand how iron interacts with inflammation, amyloid, and tau in the progression of AD. We bring to this disease the full arsenal of imaging: ultra-high resolution MRI of human AD specimens coupled with novel histological methods including x-ray microscopy and electron microscopy. We bring this armamentarium full circle to living human imaging with 7.0T MR and multi-tracer PET-MR. In mild traumatic brain injury, we are studying the imaging signatures of brain insult that occur in high-contact sports using advanced MRI combined with mouthguard accelerometer measurements of impacts. In chronic fatigue syndrome, we are identifying microstructural changes that accompany fatigue and correlate with systemic circulating cytokines that together may form a biomarker for this disorder.

How are nutrients recognized by their protein sensors? How is their transport across cellular and intracellular membranes regulated? And, how is nutrient sensing integrated with other chemical signals, such as hormones, to determine cellular decisions, especially the decision: to grow or not to grow?

We are a team of structural and chemical biologists aiming to answer these fundamental questions at the level of ångstroms, nanometers, and micrometers. Many proteins in these pathways are deregulated in cancer, and our mission is to first reveal the mechanism of action of these proteins, and then use that knowledge to develop targeted chemical probes to modulate their activity in cells and organisms.

Our lab is friendly to trainees from all walks of life, and we cherish trust, inclusiveness and intellectual curiosity, where no question is too big to study, as long as we have the right approach and a unique angle. Most importantly, our lab operates with a growth mindset for all of our trainees, and we put a heavy emphasis on training and skills development — across a wide range of experimental and computational techniques. And through collaboration, strong work ethic, seeking feedback, and trying out new strategies, we drive innovation and novel discoveries for our team.

If this is something you might be interested in, please contact Kacper directly. We are always on the lookout for driven postdocs! Especially, we want cell biologists and biochemists to join our team and to contribute your unique skillsets to a number of collaborative projects.

I am a Professor in the Department of Surgery at Stanford University. I trained as a dentist and have a certificate in Periodontics and a PhD. My lab works in the field of Regenerative Medicine and Dental Medicine, with a focus on the biological and mechanical regulation of tissue repair and regeneration. Our objective has remained unchanged for the last two decades: to make new discoveries that improve patient outcomes.

While conducting clinically relevant research has been my main objective, it has always gone hand-in-hand with another goal: I believe that education is one of the most important tools to improving human health, and I am committed to diversifying our profession for the good of our communities and society. I use every avenue available to transform the way people think about science and medicine and emphasize its contribution to their daily lives. I also invest my time in supporting initiatives that promote inclusion, equity, and diversity. I am the Vice Chair of Diversity and Inclusion in our Department of Surgery at Stanford, and in this role I oversee diversity/equity/inclusion initiatives that impact students ranging from high school and college, through to trainees and junior faculty. In my lab I have assembled a team of individuals from different racial, ethnic, gender, age, and socioeconomic backgrounds, and I believe our science is stronger because of this diversity.

Health economics, implementation science, access to care, use and effects of consumer health information.  Co-director of the NCI/VA Big Data Fellowship.  https://www.herc.research.va.gov/include/page.asp?id=bd-step

Our interest is in developing diagnostic and prognostic markers for urological diseases. Our work spans discovery, measurement methodologies, and clinical validation of candidate biomarkers. We have primarily used genomic and proteomic approaches for biomarker discovery. While our primary focus has been in prostate cancer, we have also worked in kidney cancer and other malignancies. We are also working to characterize the functional roles of several of the candidate biomarkers in cancer. In the past several years our work has expanded into benign urologic diseases including benign prostatic hyperplasia, obstructive nephropathy, and androgen insensitivity syndrome. In collaboration with bioengineers and radiologists, we have active research in molecular imaging, and protein and nucleotide detection on biological samples. We also participate in several large clinical trials for development, validation and implementation of clinical biomarkers in prostate cancer.

Our investigative focus is the design, conduct, analysis, and interpretation of human molecular epidemiology studies of complex cardiovascular disease (CVD) related traits including coronary atherosclerosis and risk factors for coronary atherosclerosis. In addition to performing discovery and validation population genomic studies, we use contemporary genetic studies to gain important insight on the causal and mechanistic nature of associations between purported risk factors and adverse cardiovascular related health outcomes through instrumental variable analyses and genetic risk score association studies of intermediate phenotypes.  Successful applicants will be immersed in cutting-edge molecular epidemiology studies of traits related to cardiovascular disease using large scale population biobanks including the Million Veteran Program, the Women‚Äôs Health Initiative, and the UK Biobank, with the goal of improving biological understanding, refining risk prediction, and discovering new therapeutic targets.

Specificity and efficacy in intracellular signal transduction can be conferred by the anchoring and co-localization of key enzymes and their upstream activators and substrate effectors by scaffold proteins. The Kapiloff lab investigates “signalosomes” formed by scaffold proteins, asking fundamental questions such as: 1) how are signalosomes constituted; 2) how are upstream signals integrated by signalosomes to regulate in a concerted manner downstream effectors; 3) what is the physiologic relevance of these signalosomes; and 4) can signalosomes be targeted in a clinically relevant manner so as to constitute new therapeutic strategies. In particular, the Kapiloff lab studies signaling within the myocardium and retina. Using a comprehensive approach that includes biochemistry, cell biology, and in vivo physiology, ongoing projects address the regulation of pathological cardiac remodeling and the effects of disease on retinal neurons.

The lifetime risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) is determined by the genetic makeup and exposure to modifiable risk factors. The Cardiovascular Link to Environmental ActioN (CLEAN) Lab is interested in understanding how various environmental pollutants (eg. tobacco, e-cigarettes, air pollution and wildfire) interact with genes to affect the transcriptome, epigenome, and eventually disease phenotype of CVD. The current focus is to investigate how different toxic exposures can adversely remodel the vascular wall leading to increased cardiac events. We intersect human genomic discoveries with animal models of disease, in-vitro and in-vivo systems of exposure, single-cell sequencing technologies to solve these questions. Additionally, we collaborate with various members of the Stanford community to develop biomarkers that will aid with detection and prognosis of CVD. We are passionate about the need to reduce the environmental effects on health through advocacy and outreach. We strongly believe that the mechanistic understanding of the adverse health effects of harmful exposures will help to devise a targeted approach towards reduction of environmental toxins as well as to identify areas in need of improving environmental equity.

"The fundamental theme of work in the Knowles lab is the application of genetics to improve human health. We view this as a continuum from Discovery to the development of Model Systems to Clinical Translation to larger Public Health efforts.

Currently, discovery and basic translational efforts center on understanding the genetic basis of insulin resistance and related cardiovascular traits using GWAS studies coupled with exploration in model systems both in vitro (including classic cell lines as well as induced pluripotent stem cells) and in vivo (primarily mouse models). Clinical-translational research efforts in the lab are at the intersection of genetics, insulin resistance and hypercholesterolemia. We are asking if we can improve an individual’s risk by giving them information (i.e. genetic risk score) about their inherited risk of heart disease. We are also performing a clinical trial to determine the mechanism of statin-associated diabetes (which predominantly occurs in those with insulin resistance). Finally, Familial Hypercholesterolemia (FH) is a major focus given its morbidity and mortality and public health impact. As the Chief Research Advisor for The FH Foundation (FHF), a patient-led non-profit research and advocacy organization, we are attempting to raise the profile of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), an inherited disease that causes extremely elevated LDL cholesterol levels and risk of coronary disease. We helped lead the FHF efforts to establish a national patient registry (CASCADE FH), apply for an ICD10 code for FH, advocate for genetic testing to be offered to FH patients and are now using cutting-edge “big-data” approaches to identify previously undiagnosed FH patients in electronic medical records (FIND FH). We collaborate with the CDC, AHA and ACC on these efforts."

I am a physician scientist with interests in cardiomyopathies, rare and undiagnosed diseases, therapeutics and genomics. I have research training in myocardial and skeletal muscle biology and genetics, genomics, and multi-scale networks. In addition to my research training, I am a physician with interest and experience treating patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, neuromuscular disease associated cardiomyopathies, and inherited dilated cardiomyopathies. I have clinical training in medicine, cardiology, cardiovascular genetics, and advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology. I have extensive translational science efforts, as site PI for ongoing clinical trials for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and dilated cardiomyopathy and for cardiomyopathy consortia including NONCOMPACT, PPCM and the Precision Medicine Study/DCM Consortium. I am Co-PI of Stanford’s NIH-funded Center for Undiagnosed Diseases, a clinical site of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network. I am also Co-PI of the NIH-funded Bioinformatics Center of the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium. I pursue projects and collaborations at the intersection of striated muscle genetics, genomics, therapeutics and clinical investigation.

Department URL:
https://med.stanford.edu/cvmedicine.html

Dr. Yang is a physician-scientist whose research focuses on cardiovascular regeneration and restoration. His laboratory combines stem cell biology with novel imaging technology to advance clinical implementation of induced pluripotent stem cells and their derivatives. Induced pluripotent stem cells and their secretes will trigger a paradigm shift. His research provides a requisite validation with emphasis on clinical translation. Dr. Yang is a Principal Investigator of the National Institute of Health (NIH) funded Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network designed to conduct multi-center clinical trial on novel stem cell therapy. In addition, he leads multiple NIH, foundation, and pharmaceutical research grants along with five clinical trials. He has received several prestigious awards, including the NIH Career Development Award, NIH Career Enhancement Award in Stem Cell Biology, NIH Mid-career Award, and multiple awards from both the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology. He is a frequent guest speaker and session chair at national and international meetings.

The investigative interests of my lab falls within the general themes of

1) Developing precision diagnostics for infectious diseases that integrates pathogen, host, and drug response information. This includes

• Developing high-content, near-patient, diagnostic system for rapid broad pathogen detection and characterization.
• Integrating multi-omics molecular and phenotypic data layers with novel computational approaches into advanced diagnostics and predictive analytics for acute infections.
• Developing personalized, rapid antimicrobial susceptibility analysis system based on early response kinetics in physiological conditions to inform antimicrobial choice, dosage, and duration.
• Exploring the clinical utility of serum bactericidal assay as a humoral immune functional assessment in the prediction of bloodstream infections. 

2) Understanding the functional roles of extracellular DNA in neutrophil extracellular traps and biofilm

• As a DNAzyme that drives bactericidal effects and immunopathologies. 

The Utz Lab focus is on the normal immune system and how it differs from the immune system of patients with immunodeficiency disorders, infections, and autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune diseases being studied include systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic sclerosis (scleroderma), myositis, primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), Sjögren's disease, insulin dependent diabetes (type I diabetes or IDDM), multiple sclerosis (MS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and mixed connective tissue disease (MCTD).