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Stephanie Van de Ven

Member, Stanford Cancer Institute

BioAs Deputy Director of the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection I broadly oversee its operations and research programs. The Canary Center is focused on developing in vitro and in vivo tools for early cancer detection and its research spans the areas of biomarker discovery, development of molecular imaging agents, development of new diagnostic and imaging devices, and mathematical modeling. In my position I facilitate the clinical translation of cancer diagnostic tools and I enable innovative interdisciplinary research. My research expertise includes leading phase I-II clinical trials to evaluate a newly developed optical breast imaging system in combination with a novel imaging agent. I gained valuable experience in clinical translation of medical devices and in testing new imaging agents for the first time in patients. My training as a Radiology resident was instrumental in my decision to focus on cancer early detection research, because it clearly confronted me with the problem that most cancer patients are being diagnosed too late. I expanded my knowledge on biomarker research by developing proteomics assays during my postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford, in conjunction with my continued work in optical and photoacoustic molecular imaging. In my current role, I work with the faculty of the Canary Center and the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, and am committed to advancing cancer research by applying my medical training, clinical knowledge, and research expertise to managing collaborative programs and contribute to the success of the Center and its faculty.

Laurens van de Wiel

Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

BioI am a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University under supervision of Matthew Wheeler and Stephen Montgomery. My research focuses on understanding the entire spectrum of genetic variation effects on protein function and structure in order to decipher molecular mechanisms of disease.

My post-doctoral work centers on developing novel software methodologies which combine multi-omics data to interpret the functional impact of genetic variants in undiagnosed patients. I am part of the Undiagnosed Disease Network (UDN) at Stanford Center for Undiagnosed Diseases (CUD), Genomics Research to Elucidate the Genetics of Rare Diseases (GREGoR) consortium at GREGoR Stanford Site (GSS), and the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC) at the Bioinformatics Center (BIC).

Before joining Stanford. I was received my Ph.D. in 2021 at the Radboud University Medical Center under supervision of Christian Gilissen, Gert Vriend, and Joris Veltman. I received my MSc degree in 2014 at Radboud University under supervision of Tom Heskes, Evgeni Levin, and Armand Paauw. Before my Ph.D, I worked as a Data Scientist at FLXone, where I developed machine learning solutions within a large-scale, real-time infrastructure.

Research
I am interested in a variety of topics in Bioinformatics and Computer Science. In particular, I am interested in the application of Artificial Intelligence and Statistical Modelling to analyse human (Rare) Mendelian Disease Genetics, Evolutionary Comparative Genomics, Protein Domain Homology, and Molecular Structures.