School of Medicine
Showing 1-8 of 8 Results
-
Sharada Kalanidhi
Director of Data Science, Biochemistry - Genome Center
Current Role at StanfordParaphrasing the mathematician Alexander Grothendieck: the essential thing is to pose problems in the right framework.
Sharada is developing a new field, Mathematical Medicine, which applies pure mathematical frameworks to genomic and multi-omic data for quantitative, personalized diagnosis. Her work addresses a fundamental challenge in contemporary medicine: prevailing cohort-based diagnostic approaches are not always equipped to capture the biological mechanisms relevant to individual patients, particularly in long-pending, complex “outlier” cases.
After more than a decade of research and close collaboration with biochemists at the Stanford Genome Technology Center (Dept. of Biochemistry), Sharada concluded that the mathematics currently used for multi-omic diagnosis is not sufficient for the level of biological and clinical complexity being attempted, particularly for individual patients who lack relevant statistical cohorts. Her conclusion echoes the perspective of the mathematician Mikhail Gromov: “This area does not yet exist. It will have to be invented.” This gap has important clinical consequences: individual biological differences may be treated as “noise” or as "outliers" rather than as clinically meaningful information. As a result, many patients with complex or multi-system conditions remain undiagnosed or incorrectly diagnosed, sometimes for decades, delaying effective treatment and, in some cases, allowing disease processes to worsen.
Mathematical Medicine addresses these limitations by developing an intermediate translational layer between cohort-based statistical models and individualized multi-omic diagnosis and clinical decision-making. The approach reflects the data-first philosophy articulated by the late mathematician Jim Simons: “We don’t start with models. We start with data. We don’t have any preconceived notions.” By developing new mathematical frameworks for interpreting an individual’s genomic and multi-omic data, Mathematical Medicine seeks to seeks to let the data speak for itself while enabling quantitative, individualized diagnosis and clinical decision-making.
Sharada’s research has led to the diagnosis and identification of appropriate treatment pathways for patients with previously undiagnosed, complex conditions. These rare and atypical cases also reveal biological relationships not apparent in population-level analyses, leading to insights that can inform broader research, clinical applications, and drug development.
Further information on this field, including opportunities for early philanthropic partnerships, is available at: https://mathmed-2026.web.app -
Preston Kellenberger
Ph.D. Student in Biochemistry, admitted Autumn 2025
BioI was raised in Saint Louis County, MO and completed my undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at The University of Missouri – Columbia. I’m most excited by translational problems that can be addressed through the structural understanding and engineering of biological molecules. At Stanford, I look forward to joining a collaborative community that spans broad scientific disciplines, and to contributing to research that advances human health. I love spending my extra time playing the drums, and I have served as a snare drummer for the world-class Madison Scouts and Cavaliers drum corps.
-
Chaitan Khosla
Wells H. Rauser and Harold M. Petiprin Professor and Professor of Chemistry and, by courtesy, of Biochemistry
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch in this laboratory focuses on problems where deep insights into enzymology and metabolism can be harnessed to improve human health.
For the past two decades, we have studied and engineered enzymatic assembly lines called polyketide synthases that catalyze the biosynthesis of structurally complex and medicinally fascinating antibiotics in bacteria. An example of such an assembly line is found in the erythromycin biosynthetic pathway. Our current focus is on understanding the structure and mechanism of this polyketide synthase. At the same time, we are developing methods to decode the vast and growing number of orphan polyketide assembly lines in the sequence databases.
For more than a decade, we have also investigated the pathogenesis of celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine, with the goal of discovering therapies and related management tools for this widespread but overlooked disease. Ongoing efforts focus on understanding the pivotal role of transglutaminase 2 in triggering the inflammatory response to dietary gluten in the celiac intestine. -
Peter S. Kim
Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professor of Biochemistry
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur research focuses on developing new strategies for vaccine creation. We also aim to generate vaccines targeting infectious agents that have eluded efforts to date. We integrate experimental approaches with protein language models to guide artificial evolution and enable efficient antibody and protein engineering. Our interdisciplinary approach aims to address critical global health challenges.
-
Silvana Maria Konermann
Assistant Professor of Biochemistry
BioSilvana is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford and Executive Director and Core Investigator at Arc Institute. Her research laboratory aims to understand the molecular pathways that drive the development of Alzheimer’s disease using next-generation functional genomics, with the long-term goal of developing rationally targeted therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from MIT. Silvana’s pioneering work on tools to directly perturb the transcriptomic landscape of the cell using CRISPR has been recognized by her faculty appointment as a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator and Hanna Gray Fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
-
Mark Krasnow
Paul and Mildred Berg Professor
Current Research and Scholarly Interests- Lung development and stem cells
- Neural circuits of breathing and speaking
- Lung diseases including lung cancer
- New genetic model organism for biology, behavior, health and conservation
