School of Medicine
Showing 1-100 of 102 Results
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Vanessa W.Y. Kan
Postdoctoral Scholar, Neurosurgery
BioI am a second-year postdoctoral researcher in Irene Llorente’s laboratory at the Department of Neurosurgery. I completed my Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences GSN-LMU in Munich, Germany, where I was trained as a circuit neuroscientist. During my doctoral work, I focused on dissecting the circuit mechanisms underlying cortical hyperexcitability in ALS, uncovering the pathophysiological role of hyper-responsive layer 2⁄3 neurons (one of the main inputs to layer 5) in the disease course. Currently, my research bridges circuit neuroscience, stem cell biology, and bioinformatics to explore mechanisms of neural repair and regeneration. I utilize advanced experimental and computational tools, including in vivo calcium imaging in awake, freely behaving rodents; machine learning-based motion sequencing (MoSeq); anterograde and retrograde viral tracing techniques; and transplantation of iPSC-derived glial-enriched progenitors and cortical interneurons. In parallel, I apply spatial transcriptomics and single-cell RNA sequencing to map cell-type–specific interactions and molecular signatures during neural circuit remodeling.
My research focuses on understanding the circuit mechanisms underlying neurological conditions such as stroke and identifying how cell-based therapies mediate repair. The ultimate goal of my work is to uncover molecular and cellular processes that promote graft–host integration and functional recovery, paving the way for next-generation regenerative therapies for the injured brain.
In addition to translational research, I am also passionate about scientific education and outreach. I mentor community college students twice a year through the Stanford Science Small Group, in which I share my own experience in research and guide them through the research process. To expand my outreach efforts, in the past summer, I collaborated with Invent Your Own Future as well as The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and organized a summer camp on Neuroscience x AI research for over 20 high school students in Hong Kong. -
Vishnu Priya Kanakaveti
Postdoctoral Scholar, Oncology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am interested in elucidating molecular mechanisms of MYC-driven drug resistance and immune evasion in cancer using computational and experimental models.
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Kathryn (Katie) Kapp
Postdoctoral Scholar, Radiology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am interested in using mass spectrometry to study protein glycosylation, a complex post-translational modification that is known to be heavily altered in cancer and could improve early cancer detection. I am using mass spectrometry to study protein glycosylation in a variety of clinical samples and cancers, but I am particularly interested in proximal fluid samples to develop more accessible ways to obtain clinical samples to study cancer and women's health.
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James Regun Karmoker
Postdoctoral Scholar, Ophthalmology
BioDr. James Regun Karmoker started his career as a Lecturer at the University of Asia Pacific, Bangladesh, after completing his B. Pharm and MS Pharm Tech from the same university. He obtained a doctorate degree in Vision Science from the University of Oklahoma, USA, where he studied immune cell activation in the context of retinal pigment epithelium injury. Currently, he is a postdoctoral scholar in Prof. Mary Elizabeth Hartnett’s lab studying age-related macular degeneration.
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Siva Kasinathan
Instructor, Pediatrics - Rheumatology
BioSiva Kasinathan, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist and Instructor of Pediatric Rheumatology at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. In addition to caring for children and young adults with rheumatic diseases in his clinical practice, Siva conducts research to advance the understanding of mechanisms of autoimmunity and autoinflammation.
Siva holds an MD and a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of Washington, where he developed high-throughput methods for epigenome profiling and contributed new insights in chromatin biology and gene regulation. During his clinical training in pediatrics and rheumatology at Stanford, he pioneered approaches for single-molecule analysis of genetic variation, DNA methylation, and chromatin structure.
Siva's current research bridges genomics and immunology with a focus on developing and applying sensitive technologies to unravel the genetic and molecular underpinnings of lupus, arthritis, and other disorders of immune regulation. Siva is committed to translating fundamental discoveries into precision therapies and biomarkers to improve outcomes for patients with immune-mediated diseases. -
Aanchal Preet Kaur
Postdoctoral Scholar, Hematology-Oncology
BioDr. Aanchal Preet Kaur is a post-doctoral fellow in the Ramakrishna lab interested in understanding the role of myeloid cells in driving immunosuppression and resistance to CAR T cell therapies in pediatric patients with diffuse midline glioma. Her work involves developing organoid models to study the interaction of myeloid cells and CAR T cells and further employ these models to validate targets identified in patient single cell sequencing data using CRISPR technology.
Dr. Aanchal Preet Kaur received her PhD in Oncology at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom where she focused on developing dendritic cell vaccines for melanoma. In her earlier post-doctoral work at Providence Cancer Institute with Dr. Michael Gough, she developed spheroid models to study the impact of radiation therapy on immune cell-cancer cell interactions. -
Yujiro Kawai
Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiothoracic Surgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCardiovascular surgery, Translational research, Regenerative research, Heart failure, Tissue engineering, Heart transplant, Spinal cord ischemia, iPS cell,
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Wayne Kepner
Postdoctoral Scholar, Psychiatry
BioWayne Kepner, PhD, MPH is a public health researcher whose work examines how addiction treatment systems can be organized to support long-term recovery. He is an Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he holds a NIDA Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01DA067040) as principal investigator. The award funds a five-year study of how medications for opioid use disorder and mutual help groups fit together in addiction treatment, along with development of a user-centered intervention to bridge the two. Dr. Keith Humphreys serves as his primary mentor and Dr. Mark McGovern as co-mentor. Dr. Kepner joined the Stanford faculty in 2026 after completing the school's NIDA T32 postdoctoral fellowship in Pain and Substance Use.
Dr. Kepner received his doctoral degree from the Joint Doctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Research on Substance Use at San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego, and he holds an MPH from San Diego State University. His doctoral research addressed substance use disorders, health services utilization, and geospatial analysis of health data, with particular attention to older adult populations. Across more than thirty peer-reviewed publications, he has studied the implementation of low-threshold opioid treatment, emergency department utilization for substance-related diagnoses, national trends in stimulant and cannabis use, and harm reduction for older adults in opioid treatment programs. He works in both qualitative and quantitative traditions, with interviews of people who use drugs alongside analyses of large electronic health record and national survey datasets. Journalists at the Washington Post, CNN, and Forbes have covered his research, and the Urban Institute cited his work on stigma in its analysis of Oregon's Measure 110.
Alongside his academic work, Dr. Kepner maintains an active commitment to recovery communities and community-based organizations. He co-founded Aztecs For Recovery, the collegiate recovery program at San Diego State University, and he now advises SMART Recovery USA and Narcotics Anonymous World Services on research. He also serves on the board of the Asian American Drug Abuse Program, where he advises the implementation of a $20 million state grant to expand behavioral health services for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. -
Andreas Kerschbaumer
Postdoctoral Scholar, Immunology and Rheumatology
BioDr. Andreas Kerschbaumer is a postdoctoral scholar in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University, conducting research in the Robinson and Khatri Labs. His work integrates clinical rheumatology with computational and systems immunology, applying meta-analytic techniques on transcriptomic datasets to uncover mechanisms of autoimmunity and improve therapeutic strategies in rheumatology.
He trained in internal medicine and rheumatology at the Medical University of Vienna, Department of Medicine III, Division of Rheumatology, where he also completed his PhD under Professors Smolen and Aletaha on treatment outcomes in inflammatory arthritis, followed by his habilitation on strategies to optimize the interpretation of clinical trial data in rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis.
Dr. Kerschbaumer has been actively engaged with the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR), contributing as Fellow, Methodologist, and Co-Methodologist to multiple international taskforces, including the 2019, 2022, and 2025 rheumatoid arthritis recommendations and the 2019 and 2023 psoriatic arthritis recommendations. He is currently a member of the EULAR Quality of Care Committee and serves as Co-Abstract Chair of the ACR Rheumatoid Arthritis abstract committee. -
Bayan Kharrat
Postdoctoral Scholar, Developmental Biology
BioDr. Bayan Kharrat is a postdoctoral researcher in the Goins Lab at Stanford University School of Medicine, where she studies the mechanisms governing fate commitment in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in Drosophila, with a focus on identifying key regulatory factors involved in this process.
Dr. Kharrat earned her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Szeged and conducted her graduate research at the HUN-REN Biological Research Centre in Szeged, where she investigated the dual role of Headcase, an imaginal cell factor, in maintaining progenitor cells in the larval lymph gland. Her expertise spans Drosophila genetics, developmental biology, molecular biology, and confocal microscopy. -
Aditi Khatpe
Postdoctoral Scholar, Pathology
BioAs a Postdoctoral Fellow, I study breast cancer progression and invasion. My research leverages high-dimensional spatial technologies to map cellular architecture and uncover how tumor–stroma interactions influence disease progression. Ultimately, my goal is to translate these insights into strategies that improve diagnosis and treatment.
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Hyunkyung Claire Kim
Postdoctoral Scholar, Endocrinology and Metabolism
BioHyunkyung Claire Kim is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Translational Genomics of Diabetes Lab led by Dr. Anna Gloyn. She received her PhD in Genetics from the University of Chicago, where she developed a statistical method to disentangle shared and trait-specific genetic architecture across complex diseases using large-scale biobank data. Prior to her doctoral training, she worked at Massachusetts General Hospital, studying the genetic subtypes and heterogeneity of type 2 diabetes through data-driven clustering approaches.
She is interested in the translational genomics of diabetes, including integrating human genetics with clinical data to uncover disease mechanisms and advance precision medicine. Her long-term research interests include developing computational methods to understand how genetic, molecular, and environmental factors jointly shape metabolic disease risk, disease heterogeneity, and progression. -
Donghoon Kim
Postdoctoral Scholar, Radiology
BioDr. Donghoon Kim is a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Functional Neuroimaging (CAFN), working in close collaboration with the Stanford Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC). His work develops cutting-edge deep learning approaches for multimodal neuroimaging analysis, with an emphasis on the early detection and characterization of Alzheimer’s disease pathology.
Before joining Stanford, he earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of California, Davis. His Ph.D. thesis was titled "Deep Learning-Driven Technical Developments and Clinical Applications of Arterial Spin Labeling MRI." During his Ph.D. studies, he focused on the development of advanced deep learning techniques for ASL MRI and its clinical applications. During his master's degree in Biomedical Engineering at Virginia Tech–Wake Forest University, he studied the functional connectivity of the default mode network using resting-state BOLD fMRI among youth football players. -
Jiyeong Kim
Postdoctoral Scholar, Dermatology
BioDr. Jiyeong Kim is a post-doctoral scholar at the Stanford Center for Digital Health and the Department of Dermatology School of Medicine. As a multi-disciplined data scientist, Dr. Kim applies artificial intelligence (AI) to clinical informatics, harnessing patient-generated health information and data to enhance patient-centered care, which could be tailored to each patient group for improving patient engagement and better health outcomes. In her work, Dr. Kim leverages large language models, machine learning, and natural language processing to understand patients' and caregivers' genuine voices of care needs and needed support for individuals with chronic diseases, not limited to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
Research Interest
-LLMs and Generative AI to Listen to the Patient
-Generative AI-Assisted Enhanced Patient Care
-ML-based Disease Prediction Modeling
-Patient-Generated Data and Precision Health -
Samsuk Kim, PhD.
Postdoctoral Scholar, Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
BioDr. Samsuk Kim is a dual research and clinical T32 fellow at Stanford University. She earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Detroit Mercy and completed external research training at the University of Michigan (Kratz Lab), where she studied psychosocial factors—such as mindfulness and pain acceptance—in chronic pain. She also completed an APA-accredited internship at the VA Boston Healthcare System. Clinically, Dr. Kim specializes in pain management, health promotion, adjustment-related challenges, and emotional regulation. She draws from a range of evidence-based treatments, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based interventions, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and interpersonal psychotherapy. Her current research focuses on understanding the bidirectional relationship between sleep and pain and developing personalized, digital interventions to improve outcomes in both domains.
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Maximilian Koch
Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford Cancer Institute
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPhysician-scientist working at the interface of immunology and clinical translation in infection and cancer. Focused on defining how adaptive immune responses shape biological systems and translating these insights into next-generation immunotherapies.
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Gabriele Kockelkoren
Postdoctoral Scholar, Genetics
BioGabriele has a strong background in both physics and molecular biology and, accordingly, he strives in interdisciplinary environments. After completing a cum laude BSc. and MSc. in Nanobiology at the Technical University of Delft in The Netherlands, Gabriele pursued a PhD at the University of Copenhagen under the supervision of Prof. Dimitrios Stamou. In his PhD, Gabriele studied the nanoscale spatial organization of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) at the plasma membrane of living cells. Importantly, his work reveals heterogeneous spatial patterns of receptor density and activation, that are modulated in a drug-dependent manner. These findings identify GPCR spatial organization as an integral element of their activity and signaling. Currently, Gabriele is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Prof. Alice Ting developing programmable receptors for molecular sensing and controlling cellular behaviour.
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Shailendra Koirala
Postdoctoral Scholar, Radiology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDeveloping and optimizing MRI lymphangiography techniques in large-animal (porcine) models to enable quantitative assessment of lymphatic function and support translation of preclinical imaging methods toward clinical applications.
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Praneeta R. Konduri
Postdoctoral Scholar, Neurology and Neurological Sciences
BioDr. Konduri is a Postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences. With a background in biomedical engineering, she conducted her PhD research as part of a European consortium that developed computational stroke models, while also analyzing post-treatment brain tissue damage from multicenter clinical trials to assess prognosis. After completing her PhD, she continued as a Postdoctoral Researcher within the European consortium GEMINI, that aimed to implement digital twins for personalized stroke treatment. At the Stanford Stroke Center, she now focusses on developing AI tools for stroke diagnosis, treatment evaluation, prognostication, and personalized treatment development.
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Qinqin Kong
Postdoctoral Scholar, General Internal Medicine
BioI am currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Departments of Medicine and Health Policy at Stanford University, after earning my PhD in Atmospheric Science from Purdue University. My research examines the physical drivers and societal impacts of extreme heat. My PhD work focused on how land–atmosphere interactions shape human heat stress and on the economic and energy impacts of increasing heat stress under climate change. At Stanford, my postdoctoral research focuses on the public health impacts of heat, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
My ongoing projects include: (1) evaluating the effects of dry versus humid prenatal heat exposure on child stunting in India; and (2) developing a data-driven framework to address a longstanding question in heat-health research: how much should humidity factor into the measurement of human heat stress? My methodological expertise spans climate modeling, human biophysics modeling, and empirical causal inference. -
Naoki Konno
Postdoctoral Scholar, Genetics
BioNaoki has extensive training in evolutionary biology and bioinformatics, and he thrives in interdisciplinary environments bridging computation and developmental biology. After earning his BSc. and MSc. in Systems Biology and Bioinformatics at the University of Tokyo, Naoki pursued a PhD in Evolutionary Biology under the supervision by Prof. Chikara Furusawa. He has developed computational frameworks to reconstruct and predict evolutionary processes, including large-scale phylogenetic inference for both evolution and cell lineage tracing (FRACTAL) and predictive models of microbial genome evolution (Evodictor). His work revealed generalizable rules of genome evolution and was recognized with multiple awards, including the JSPS Ikushi Prize.
Currently, Naoki is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the lab of Prof. Xiaojie Qiu at Stanford University School of Medicine. In his postdoctoral research, he investigates the evolutionary constraints of vertebrate development with a focus on the heart as a model system. By integrating single-cell and spatial transcriptomics with predictive modeling and CRISPR-based perturbations, he seeks to uncover how evolutionary principles shape developmental trajectories and contribute to congenital heart defects. Ultimately, Naoki aims to establish a broad research program in evolution-aware medicine, connecting evolutionary theory with biomedical challenges. -
Izabela Kowalczyk
Postdoctoral Scholar, Developmental Biology
BioDr. Izabela Kowalczyk is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Sarah Bowling, Department of Developmental Biology. She is studying embryonic development, with a focus on heart valve formation and the influence of the maternal environment on this process. Dr. Kowalczyk completed her Ph.D. at the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, under the supervision of Dr. Annette Hammes, where she investigated cell and tissue morphogenesis during early forebrain development. Her work identified novel components of Sonic Hedgehog (SHH) signaling and primary cilia biology, providing new insights into the variable penetrance of holoprosencephaly in mouse models.
