Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI)


Showing 41-50 of 86 Results

  • Peter Meaney

    Peter Meaney

    Clinical Professor, Pediatrics - Critical Care

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Meaney is a nationally and internationally recognized pediatric resuscitation scientist, and his current focus is on improving care for seriously ill children at the community clinic and district hospital level in low and middle income countries. Dr Meaney seeks to conduct the necessary research to pioneer, implement and evaluate innovative yet relevant and practical solutions to improve the quality of care for seriously ill or injured children worldwide.

  • Rishi Mediratta

    Rishi Mediratta

    Clinical Associate Professor, Pediatrics

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI have developed a new promising neonatal mortality prediction score at the University of Gondar Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Gondar, Ethiopia. The score predicts approximately 84% of neonatal deaths in the NICU using clinical variables. I have a dataset over 800 NICU admissions in Gondar. I am recruiting scholars who are interested in conducting clinical and epidemiological research to validate, refine, and implement the mortality score to reduce neonatal mortality in Ethiopia.

  • Eric Meffre

    Eric Meffre

    Professor of Medicine (Immunology and Rheumatology)

    BioDr. Meffre obtained his PhD in Immunology from the Université d’Aix-Marseille in France before he moved to the USA as a postdoc fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Michel Nussenzweig at The Rockefeller University in New York City. He became an assistant professor at Cornell University in 2003 before being recruited at Yale University as associate professor in 2009. He was tenured at Yale in 2014 before he joined the Department of Medicine/Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University as a tenured full professor in 2022.

    Dr. Meffre’s work focuses on the etiology of autoimmune syndromes and the roles played by B cells in these diseases. His group characterized the abnormal selection of developing autoreactive B cells in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), type 1 diabetes (T1D), multiple sclerosis (MS) and Sjögren’s syndrome, resulting in large numbers of autoreactive naïve B cells accumulating in the patient’s blood. Hence, these autoreactive B cells may present self-antigens to T cells and initiate autoimmune diseases. These early B cell tolerance defects are likely primary to these autoimmune diseases and may result from genetic factors such as the 1858T PTPN22 allele that segregates with RA, SLE and T1D and correlate with an impaired removal of developing autoreactive B cells.
    His research goals also consist in characterizing the molecules and pathways involved in the establishment of B cell tolerance and the removal of developing autoreactive B cells generated by random V(D)J recombination through the investigation of rare patients with primary immunodeficiency (PID) enrolled through an international network. Alteration of B cell receptor (BCR) or Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling in PID patients results in a defective central B cell tolerance and a failure to counterselect developing autoreactive B cells in the bone marrow. In contrast, functional and suppressive regulatory T cells play a key role in preventing the accumulation of autoreactive clones in the mature naïve B cell compartment. The recent development of humanized mouse models recapitulating early B cell tolerance checkpoints and their defects in autoimmune settings allow further in-depth investigation of tolerance mechanisms and the development of novel approaches to restore defective central and peripheral B cell tolerance checkpoints and thwart autoimmunity.

  • Kara Meister, MD, FAAP, FACS

    Kara Meister, MD, FAAP, FACS

    Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery (OHNS) and, by courtesy, of Pediatrics

    BioKara D. Meister, MD, FAAP, FACS is a pediatric otolaryngologist and head & neck surgeon. She received her medical degree from Medical University of South Carolina and completed her otolaryngology residency at University of Pittsburgh. She completed a NIH-funded fellowship in head and neck research at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Meister then went on to complete a pediatric otolaryngology fellowship at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

    She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department Otolaryngology, Division of Pediatric Otolaryngology, at Stanford University. Dr. Meister’s research interests include thyroid cancer, head & neck masses, Graves' disease. She has a special interest in the influence of the environment and pollutants (such as microplastics) on health. She currently serves as the Co-Clinical Chief of Pediatric Otolaryngology. Dr. Meister completed additional training in innovation through the Stanford Biodesign Faculty Fellowship.

    Her clinical interests include the treatment of patients with head and neck masses including thyroid nodules and cancer. She is Co-Director, Surgical, of the Children's Thyroid Center at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and is a participating surgeon in the Aerodigestive and Airway Reconstruction Center at Stanford Children’s Health. She is co-editor of the textbook "Pediatric Bronchoscopy for Clinicians" and enjoys advocacy work with the American Academy of Pediatrics Button Battery Taskforce.

    Dr. Meister is a member of the American Thyroid Association (ATA) where she serves on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee and is a member of the ATA Guidelines Writing Group for Thyroid Disease & Pregnancy. She is a member of the pediatric committee of the American Head and Neck Society. She is an author and speaker on masses and tumors of the head and neck, thyroid disease, and thyroid cancer in children and adolescents. In collaboration with SHC, she offers novel treatment for thyroid problems in children and adolescents including radiofrequency ablation of thyroid nodules.

    Dr. Meister lives in Woodside with her husband, 3 children, and Rooney the dog.

    Clinical Expertise:
    Children's Thyroid Center, Co-Director, Surgical
    Thyroid nodules
    Thyroid cancer - papillary, follicular, and medullary
    Surgical management of hyperthyroidism and Grave's disease
    MEN syndrome
    Head and Neck masses
    Congenital neck masses such as branchial cleft cyst, thyroglossal duct cyst
    Pediatric Head and Neck cancer
    Airway evaluation and reconstruction, voice and swallowing problems, and Aerodigestive
    Fetal Airway and Exit Team

  • Esmeralda Melgoza

    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.

  • Elizabeth Mellins

    Elizabeth Mellins

    Member, Bio-X

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMolecular mechanisms and intracellular pathways of MHC class II antigen processing and presentation, with a focus on B cells; mechanisms underlying HLA allele association with disease; disease mechanisms in systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis, including an HLA-linked complication; monocytes as drivers or suppressors of auto-inflammation in systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis and pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome.

  • Nicholas Melosh

    Nicholas Melosh

    Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

    BioThe Melosh group explores how to apply new methods from the semiconductor and self-assembly fields to important problems in biology, materials, and energy. We think about how to rationally design engineered interfaces to enhance communication with biological cells and tissues, or to improve energy conversion and materials synthesis. In particular, we are interested in seamlessly integrating inorganic structures together with biology for improved cell transfection and therapies, and designing new materials, often using diamondoid molecules as building blocks.
    My group is very interested in how to design new inorganic structures that will seamless integrate with biological systems to address problems that are not feasible by other means. This involves both fundamental work such as to deeply understand how lipid membranes interact with inorganic surfaces, electrokinetic phenomena in biologically relevant solutions, and applying this knowledge into new device designs. Examples of this include “nanostraw” drug delivery platforms for direct delivery or extraction of material through the cell wall using a biomimetic gap-junction made using nanoscale semiconductor processing techniques. We also engineer materials and structures for neural interfaces and electronics pertinent to highly parallel data acquisition and recording. For instance, we have created inorganic electrodes that mimic the hydrophobic banding of natural transmembrane proteins, allowing them to ‘fuse’ into the cell wall, providing a tight electrical junction for solid-state patch clamping. In addition to significant efforts at engineering surfaces at the molecular level, we also work on ‘bridge’ projects that span between engineering and biological/clinical needs. My long history with nano- and microfabrication techniques and their interactions with biological constructs provide the skills necessary to fabricate and analyze new bio-electronic systems.


    Research Interests:
    Bio-inorganic Interface
    Molecular materials at interfaces
    Self-Assembly and Nucleation and Growth

  • Fernando S. Mendoza

    Fernando S. Mendoza

    Associate Dean of Minority Advising and Programs and Professor of Pediatrics (General Pediatrics) at the Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI have two research interests: childhood health disparities and workforce diversity. My research on childhood health disparities centers on Latino and immigrant children with a focus on early childhood health and development. My work in workforce diversity examines the pipeline for diversity in academic pediatrics, with special attention on the pipeline for underrepresent minorities.