Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute


Showing 1-10 of 33 Results

  • Cholawat Pacharinsak, DVM, PhD

    Cholawat Pacharinsak, DVM, PhD

    Associate Professor of Comparative Medicine

    BioCholawat Pacharinsak, DVM, PhD Associate Professor and Director of Anesthesia, Pain Management, and Surgery, at Stanford University’s Department of Comparative Medicine; he is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Anesthesia and Analgesia (DACVAA). He received his DVM from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand and trained in an Anesthesiology/Pain Management residency program and received his Master's degree at Washington State University. He completed his PhD in Comparative and Molecular Biosciences from the University of Minnesota. Prior to arriving at Stanford, Dr. Pacharinsak was a faculty member in Anesthesiology and Pain Management at Michigan State University and Purdue University; and served as a Clinical Specialist at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. His research focuses on understanding the neurobiology of cancer pain, chemotherapeutic-induced peripheral neuropathy, acute surgical pain models, and methods to improve clinical pain management e.g. sustained release analgesics supporting refinement. Research methodology includes electrophysiologic and behavioral techniques.

  • Daniel Palanker, PhD

    Daniel Palanker, PhD

    Professor of Ophthalmology and, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsInteractions of electric field and light with biological cells and tissues and their applications to imaging, diagnostics, therapeutics and prosthetics, primarily in ophthalmology.
    Specific fields of interest:
    Electronic retinal prosthesis;
    Electronic enhancement of tear secretion;
    Electronic control of blood vessels;
    Non-damaging retinal laser therapy;
    Ultrafast laser surgery;
    Interferometric imaging of neural signals;
    Cell transplantation and retinal plasticity.

  • Theo Palmer

    Theo Palmer

    Professor of Neurosurgery, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMembers of the Palmer Lab study the biology of neural stem cells in brain development and in the adult. Our primary goal is to understand how genes and environment synergize in influencing stem cell behavior during development and how mild genetic or environmental risk factors for disease may synergize in their detrimental effects on brain development or in the risk of neuronal loss in age-related degenerative disease.

  • David Jaehyun Park

    David Jaehyun Park

    Clinical Instructor, Neurosurgery

    BioDavid Park, MD, PhD, is a neurosurgeon who graduated from medical school at the Catholic University of Korea in Seoul, South Korea. He then completed his internship and residency training in the Department of Neurosurgery at Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital. He became a board-certified neurosurgeon in South Korea in 2014 and subsequently completed a 2-year fellowship at the same hospital, specializing in brain tumor surgery and skull base surgery. During his residency, he also attended graduate school while practicing neurosurgery as a trainee and successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, titled “Combination therapy for gliomas using temozolomide and interferon-beta secreting human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells,” in 2015.

    After completing his fellowship in South Korea, Dr. Park moved to Singapore in 2016 and worked as a Clinical Fellow (Clinical Associate) at the National Neuroscience Institute for one year, focusing on Neurosurgical Oncology and Skull Base Surgery.

    In 2017, Dr. Park joined Dr. Christian Badr’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, conducting translational research on glioblastoma and studying the role of fatty acids and lipid metabolism in glioblastoma to complement his clinical expertise.

    During this time, Dr. Park also launched a startup based on his invention of an intraoperative diagnostic tool for tumor detection during glioma surgery. He collaborated with bioengineers at M.I.T. to develop a prototype and secured seed funding from the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program. As an alumnus of the MIT Sandbox program, he continues to develop this project.

    In 2020, Dr. Park served as a Neurosurgical Oncology and Radiosurgery Fellow (Teaching Associate) for a year at North Shore University Hospital, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, in Long Island, New York, where he worked with Dr. Michael Schulder on brain tumor surgery including advanced techniques, such as Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy (LITT) and Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS).

    From July 2021 to June 2022, he completed another fellowship in Neurosurgical Oncology and Radiosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland. He devoted his efforts to minimally invasive neurosurgical techniques such as LITT and Gamma Knife SRS, as well as awake brain tumor surgery under the guidance of Drs. Gene Barnett, Lilyana Angelov, and Ali Mohammadi.

    As of July 2022, Dr. Park has joined the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University as a Clinical Instructor, working with Dr. Steven D. Chang in the fields of Neurosurgical Oncology and CyberKnife SRS.

  • Karen J. Parker, PhD

    Karen J. Parker, PhD

    Truong-Tan Broadcom Endowed Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Comparative Medicine

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe Parker Lab conducts research on the biology of social functioning in monkeys, typically developing humans, and patients with social impairments.

  • Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD

    Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD

    Professor of Neurology (Adult Neurology) and, by courtesy, of Neurosurgery

    BioDr. Parvizi completed his medical internship at Mayo Clinic, neurology training at Harvard, and subspecialty training in clinical neurophysiology and epilepsy at UCLA before joining the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford in 2007. Dr. Parvizi directs the Stanford Program for Medication Resistant Epilepsies and specializes in surgical treatments of intractable focal epilepsies. Dr. Parvizi is the principal investigator in the Laboratory of Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, where he leads a team of investigators to study the human brain. http://med.stanford.edu/parvizi-lab.html.

  • Anca M. Pasca, MD

    Anca M. Pasca, MD

    Assistant Professor of Pediatrics

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe research focus of the lab is to understand molecular mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental disorders associated with premature birth, neonatal and fetal brain injury with the long-term goal of translating the lab’s findings into therapeutics. The research team employs a multidisciplinary approach involving genetics, molecular and developmental neurobiology, animal models and neural cells differentiated from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In particular, the lab is using a powerful 3D human brain-region specific organoid system developed at Stanford (Nature Methods, 2015; Nature Protocols, 2018) to ask questions about brain injury during development.

    https://www.neopascalab.org/

  • Sergiu P. Pasca

    Sergiu P. Pasca

    Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsA critical challenge in understanding the intricate programs underlying development, assembly and dysfunction of the human brain is the lack of direct access to intact, functioning human brain tissue for detailed investigation by imaging, recording, and stimulation.
    To address this, we are developing bottom-up approaches to generate and assemble, from multi-cellular components, human neural circuits in vitro and in vivo.
    We introduced the use of instructive signals for deriving from human pluripotent stem cells self-organizing 3D cellular structures named brain region-specific spheroids/organoids. We demonstrated that these cultures, such as the ones resembling the cerebral cortex, can be reliably derived across many lines and experiments, contain synaptically connected neurons and non-reactive astrocytes, and can be used to gain mechanistic insights into genetic and environmental brain disorders. Moreover, when maintained as long-term cultures, they recapitulate an intrinsic program of maturation that progresses towards postnatal stages.
    We also pioneered a modular system to integrate 3D brain region-specific organoids and study human neuronal migration and neural circuit formation in functional preparations that we named assembloids. We have actively applied these models in combination with studies in long-term ex vivo brain preparations to acquire a deeper understanding of human physiology, evolution and disease mechanisms.
    We have carved a unique research program that combines rigorous in vivo and in vitro neuroscience, stem cell and molecular biology approaches to construct and deconstruct previously inaccessible stages of human brain development and function in health and disease.
    We believe science is a community effort, and accordingly, we have been advancing the field by broadly and openly sharing our technologies with numerous laboratories around the world and organizing the primary research conference and the training courses in the area of cellular models of the human brain.

  • Chirag Patel, MD, PhD

    Chirag Patel, MD, PhD

    Member, Cardiovascular Institute

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsNeuro-oncology, Clinical Trials, Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields), Molecular/PET Imaging, Neuroimaging, Immunotherapy, Big Data Analysis