Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI)
Showing 101-120 of 210 Results
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Lili Liu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Epidemiology
BioLili (Larry) Liu, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University. Dr. Liu is an integrative epidemiologist whose research is unified by a consistent methodological approach rather than a single disease area. Across his master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral training, he has repeatedly developed or operationalized epidemiologic frameworks and analytic programs and applied them to important public health questions spanning rare diseases, chronic disease, cancer, mortality, microbiome, and women’s health. His work brings together molecular biomarkers, large-scale population cohorts, and real-world health data to generate coherent, hypothesis-driven research on how genetic variation, lifestyle, pharmacologic factors, and early-life exposures shape inflammation, biological aging, and chronic disease risk across the life course.
During his master’s training at Peking University, Dr. Liu developed expertise in literature synthesis, national claims-based study, rare disease burden estimation, patient-centered health information research, cohort-based analysis, and vaccine effectiveness evaluation. He helped build and apply claims-based analytic algorithms to estimate incidence and prevalence for multiple rare diseases in China, led first-author studies on online health information and patient information needs in rare disease populations, and established an analytic framework for CHARLS-based cohort studies that supported multiple downstream projects. During his PhD training at Vanderbilt University, he expanded into population genetics, molecular and cancer epidemiology, mortality and health disparities research, gut microbiome, and pooled multi-study analyses. His doctoral work included a multi-ancestry GWAS of urinary prostaglandin E2 metabolite (PGE-M), development of PGE-M-derived dietary and lifestyle scores, and Mendelian randomization analyses linking lipid-related pathways to colorectal cancer risk. He also led several first-author studies in the Southern Community Cohort Study on poverty, sitting time, physical activity, walking and mortality, and alcohol intake and the gut microbiome, several of which received substantial public health and media attention.
At Stanford, Dr. Liu has developed an independent research program centered on women’s health and life-course epidemiology using U.S. national claims data. He has built large nationwide pregnancy and mother-baby cohorts from MarketScan to study adverse obstetric outcomes, long-term cardiometabolic and hepatic outcomes, and early-onset cancer risk. His first corresponding-author paper at Stanford examined gestational diabetes in relation to subsequent type 2 diabetes and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, and his ongoing work extends this framework to cardiovascular, kidney, metabolic, and reproductive health outcomes, including PCOS and endometriosis. He also received a Stanford MCHRI fellowship grant to study prenatal and early-life antibiotic exposure in relation to pediatric inflammatory bowel disease and celiac disease. In parallel, his collaborative work includes placental and maternal-fetal research on extracellular vesicles and angiogenic signaling.
Methodologically, Dr. Liu works at the interface of causal inference, pharmacoepidemiology, molecular epidemiology, and scalable real-world data science, using reproducible analytic pipelines in R, Python, SQL, and high-performance computing environments. Across all stages of his training, the central theme of his work has been to build scalable analytic infrastructure and apply it to high-impact epidemiologic questions with broad public health relevance, with the overarching goal of translating rigorous population science into actionable strategies for chronic disease prevention in diverse populations. -
Lin Liu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Chemistry
BioI finished my undergraduate study in general chemistry at Shandong Normal University in 2014. Later, I continued to my master’s studies in organic chemistry at Lanzhou University. In 2018, I moved to Baylor University conducting research under the mentorship of Professor John L. Wood. During my graduate studies, I mainly focused on the total syntheses of natural products. In 2024, I joined the Khosla lab and Cui lab as a joint postdoc. Outside the lab, I like cooking, playing basketball, and watching movies
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Qianheng Ma
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychiatry
BioQianheng (Jessica) Ma obtained her PhD degree of biostatistics at University of Chicago under the supervision of Prof. Donald Hedeker and is the 2021 recipient of the dissertation grant from Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology (SMEP). Her current research focus are modern statistical methods and deep learning techniques for mining (multivariate) intensive longitudinal data especially psychological/behavioral measures collected by mobile/wearable devices. Besides research, she loves playing the piano and is good at Jazz improvisation and she can speak fluent Cantonese.
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Amit Manhas
Instructor, Cardiovascular Institute
BioDr. Amit Manhas is an instructor at the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, specializing in cardiovascular disease modeling, cardio-oncology, and stem cell biology. Dr. Manhas earned his PhD in Biological Sciences from the Pharmacology Division at the CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, India, where his doctoral research focused on cardioprotective mechanisms in ischemic injury.
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Brittany Elizabeth Matheson, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
BioBrittany Matheson, PhD, is a clinical assistant professor and licensed clinical psychologist in the Eating Disorders Clinic. She completed her undergraduate degree at Duke University, doctorate from the Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego, and APA clinical internship at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford (LPCH)/Children’s Health Council. Dr. Matheson is a certified family-based treatment (FBT) therapist and consultant. She is also the director of the Stanford Eating Disorder Research Program Data Coordination Center and collaborates with colleagues on NIH-funded randomized clinical trials. Dr. Matheson's research interests include examining the psychosocial, neurocognitive, and familial factors related to disordered eating and excess weight gain in youth. She is interested in the development and implementation of evidence-based treatments for youth with disordered eating as well as better understanding factors that influence pediatric bariatric surgery outcomes. Dr. Matheson has specialized research and clinical expertise in the interplay among obesity, disordered eating, and autism spectrum disorder and is the director of psychological services for the LPCH adolescent metabolic and bariatric surgery program. She conducts comprehensive evaluations and provides evidence-based treatments for individuals across the age-spectrum with eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, and other specified feeding and eating disorders. Her recent research focuses on reducing access to care barriers by digitizing evidence-based treatments and utilizing technology to enhance treatment outcomes.
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Esmeralda Melgoza
Postdoctoral Scholar, Emergency Medicine
BioEsmeralda Melgoza, PhD, MPH, CHES is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University's School of Medicine. Her research examines health inequities in the U.S. healthcare system, with a focus on emergency medical services provided in the prehospital setting and the emergency department. She centers her research on the experiences of underserved populations, including Latine/Hispanics, older adults, and people with limited English proficiency. She is trained in both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including JAMA Network Open, Medical Care, the Journal of the American Heart Association, Health Affairs Scholar, Prehospital Emergency Care, and SSM-Qualitative Research in Health, among others. She is a current recipient of a grant from the CARESTAR Foundation.
Dr. Melgoza received her PhD in Community Health Sciences from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and a minor in Gerontology from the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Her dissertation research was funded by an R36 grant from the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Melgoza is a former Senior Research Analyst at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute and an alumna of the Yale Ciencia Academy at Yale University. She is bilingual in English and Spanish. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, mentoring, and hiking. -
Vaishali Mittal
Member, Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI)
BioVaishali Mittal, MD is a Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow in the Department of Dermatology at Stanford University under the guidance of Dr. Jean Y. Tang.
Her current research is focused on epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a group of rare diseases that cause the skin and mucous membranes to blister easily. She is involved in conducting long-term clinical trials examining the application of an autologous, gene-corrected keratinocyte sheet for the treatment of recessive dystrophic EB (RDEB). In addition, she is currently leading several research projects, including investigation of genotype-phenotype associations in multiple subtypes of EB, creation of an online platform for EB patients/families and investigators to collaborate together on research, and development of an online genetic registry for EB patients using a novel, home-based genetic testing kit.
Vaishali received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed her internship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Brockton Hospital. -
Masashi Miyauchi
Basic Life Research Scientist, Medicine - Med/Hematology
BioMasashi Miyauchi, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist specializing in hematology, oncology, immunology, and stem cell biology, with over a decade of experience in clinical hematology and oncology. Dr. Miyauchi's academic career commenced at Kyoto University, where he obtained his MD in Medicine. He furthered his expertise with a PhD in Internal Medicine from The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Medicine. Following his comprehensive clinical training and professional appointments at The University of Tokyo Hospital, Dr. Miyauchi embarked on a postdoctoral journey at Stanford University in the Nakauchi lab, starting in July 2019.
Dr. Miyauchi's clinical training is extensive, including a Senior Residency in Internal Medicine and a Clinical Fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at The University of Tokyo Hospital. This period was complemented by his participation in a Cancer Professional Training Plan. After completing his clinical fellowship, Dr. Miyauchi has served in various pivotal roles at The University of Tokyo Hospital and The University of Tokyo. His positions as a clinically-focused Project Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Hematology and Oncology have enabled him to contribute significantly to pioneering research and education for the next wave of medical professionals.
In his PhD research, Dr. Miyauchi specialized in the disease modeling of cancers and cancer stem cells, employing cancer patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). His work with iPSCs notably includes scalable ex vivo manufacturing of human neutrophils. In his postdoctoral research under the guidance of Dr. Hiromitsu Nakauchi in Genetics at Stanford, Dr. Miyauchi has been concentrating on developing a stable hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) expansion system in both mouse and human models. His research is focused on exploring the potential applications of this expansion system, underlining his commitment to advancing the fields of stem cell biology, regenerative medicine and oncology.
