School of Medicine


Showing 1-20 of 207 Results

  • Yonatan Winetraub

    Yonatan Winetraub

    Instructor, Structural Biology

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy interests span non-invasive imaging for early cancer diagnosis and space exploration.
    I'm focusing on utilizing Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and machine learning to create virtual histology tools to image cancer non invasively at a single cell resolution, allowing physicians to skip biopsy (read more about the research). Prior to my PhD at Stanford, I co-founded SpaceIL, a non-profit organization that launched the first private interplanetary robotic mission to the Moon launched 2019.

  • John Wachtel

    John Wachtel

    Clinical Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology - General

    BioDr. Wachtel has been practicing general obstetrics and gynecology for 38 years and has personally delivered over 6,000 babies. He continues to have an active practice in general ob/gyn, serving as a Clinical Professor. He is a nationally recognized expert in patient safety, peer review and data driven quality improvement and has served numerous roles in the field and lectured nationally and internationally. Dr. Wachtel is the Assistant Secretary for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and currently serves on the ACOG National Executive Board and Executive Committee. He is the immediate Past Chair for ACOG District IX (the state of California) and also previously served for three years on the ACOG national Executive Board. He also serves on the Executive Committee for the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative and is an Expert Medical Reviewer for the Medical Board of California.

  • Lynn C. Waelde, Ph.D.

    Lynn C. Waelde, Ph.D.

    Adjunct Clinical Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

    BioLynn C. Waelde, Ph.D. is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and Professor Emeritus in the Psychology Department at Palo Alto University. Dr. Waelde’s many collaborative publications address the impacts of traumatic events and ways to use mindfulness and meditation to promote resilience and recovery from stress and trauma. She founded and directed the Inner Resources Center which offered intervention groups and trainings to thousands of participants, clients, and therapists over the past 15 years. Dr. Waelde is the author of Mindfulness and Meditation in Trauma Treatment: The Inner Resources for Stress Program, published in 2022. She has taken a special interest in family caregivers and the Inner Resources for Stress program has been named a Best Practice by the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging. She recently coauthored Family Caregiver Distress, which is forthcoming in 2023. She is on the editorial board of Journal of Traumatic Stress and an Associate Editor of Mindfulness.

  • Todd Wagner

    Todd Wagner

    Professor (Research) of Surgery (Surgery Policy Improvement Research and Education Center) and, by courtesy, of Health Policy

    BioTodd Wagner is a Professor in the Department of Surgery at Stanford University. He studies health information, efficiency and value, and health care access. He is particularly interested in developing learning health care systems that provide high value care. In addition to his role at Stanford, he Directs the Health Economics Resource Center at the Palo Alto VA, where he is a VA Research Career Scientist and he co-directs the VA/NCI Big Data Fellowship.

  • Soichi Wakatsuki

    Soichi Wakatsuki

    Professor of Photon Science and of Structural Biology

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsUbiquitin signaling: structure, function, and therapeutics
    Ubiquitin is a small protein modifier that is ubiquitously produced in the cells and takes part in the regulation of a wide range of cellular activities such as gene transcription and protein turnover. The key to the diversity of the ubiquitin roles in cells is that it is capable of interacting with other cellular proteins either as a single molecule or as different types of chains. Ubiquitin chains are produced through polymerization of ubiquitin molecules via any of their seven internal lysine residues or the N-terminal methionine residue. Covalent interaction of ubiquitin with other proteins is known as ubiquitination which is carried out through an enzymatic cascade composed of the ubiquitin-activating (E1), ubiquitin-conjugating (E2), and ubiquitin ligase (E3) enzymes. The ubiquitin signals are decoded by the ubiquitin-binding domains (UBDs). These domains often specifically recognize and non-covalently bind to the different ubiquitin species, resulting in distinct signaling outcomes.
    We apply a combination of the structural (including protein crystallography, small angle x-ray scattering, cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) etc.), biocomputational and biochemical techniques to study the ubiquitylation and deubiquitination processes, and recognition of the ubiquitin chains by the proteins harboring ubiquitin-binding domains. Current research interests including SARS-COV2 proteases and their interactions with polyubiquitin chains and ubiquitin pathways in host cell responses, with an ultimate goal of providing strategies for effective therapeutics with reduced levels of side effects.

    Protein self-assembly processes and applications.
    The Surface layers (S-layers) are crystalline protein coats surrounding microbial cells. S-layer proteins (SLPs) regulate their extracellular, self-assembly by crystallizing when exposed to an environmental trigger. We have demonstrated that the Caulobacter crescentus SLP readily crystallizes into sheets both in vivo and in vitro via a calcium-triggered multistep assembly pathway. Observing crystallization using a time course of Cryo-EM imaging has revealed a crystalline intermediate wherein N-terminal nucleation domains exhibit motional dynamics with respect to rigid lattice-forming crystallization domains. Rate enhancement of protein crystallization by a discrete nucleation domain may enable engineering of kinetically controllable self-assembling 2D macromolecular nanomaterials. In particular, this is inspiring designing robust novel platform for nano-scale protein scaffolds for structure-based drug design and nano-bioreactor design for the carbon-cycling enzyme pathway enzymes. Current research focuses on development of nano-scaffolds for high throughput in vitro assays and structure determination of small and flexible proteins and their interaction partners using Cryo-EM, and applying them to cancer and anti-viral therapeutics.

    Multiscale imaging and technology developments.
    Multimodal, multiscale imaging modalities will be developed and integrated to understand how molecular level events of key enzymes and protein network are connected to cellular and multi-cellular functions through intra-cellular organization and interactions of the key machineries in the cell. Larger scale organization of these proteins will be studied by solution X-ray scattering and Cryo-EM. Their spatio-temporal arrangements in the cell organelles, membranes, and cytosol will be further studied by X-ray fluorescence imaging and correlated with cryoEM and super-resolution optical microscopy. We apply these multiscale integrative imaging approaches to biomedical, and environmental and bioenergy research questions with Stanford, DOE national labs, and other domestic and international collaborators.

  • Heather Wakelee

    Heather Wakelee

    Winston Chen and Phyllis Huang Professor

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Wakelee's research is focused on clinical trials and translational efforts in patients with lung cancer and other thoracic malignancies such as thymoma and thymic carcinoma. Other interests include translation projects in thoracic malignancies and collaborations with population scientists regarding lung cancer questions.

  • Rebecca D. Walker

    Rebecca D. Walker

    Clinical Associate Professor, Emergency Medicine

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsInterests include international development in emergency care, healthcare disparities, wilderness medicine, human rights, administration

  • Dennis Wall

    Dennis Wall

    Professor of Pediatrics (Clinical Informatics), of Biomedical Data Science and, by courtesy, of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsSystems biology for design of clinical solutions that detect and treat disease

  • Jessica Falco-Walter

    Jessica Falco-Walter

    Clinical Associate Professor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences

    BioJessica Falco-Walter, MD is board certified in Neurology as well as in Epilepsy and Clinical Neurophysiology and practices as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences at Stanford University. Dr. Walter received her BA in Cognitive Science with distinction from Yale University. She received her MD and completed her internship at Georgetown University School of Medicine and then completed her neurology residency at the Mount Sinai Medical Center of the Icahn School of Medicine. She then went on to pursue fellowship in Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy at Rush University Medical Center, in Chicago, IL. She is board certified by the ABPN in Neurology, Clinical Neurophysiology, and Epilepsy. She was one of the first ABPN Epilepsy fellows in the country. Her clinical focus is diagnosis and treatment of seizure disorders and epilepsy, with commitment to treating complex patients and improving quality of life as well as seizure control.

    She has a particular interest in dietary treatments for epilepsy and has created a clinic to better manage ketogenic diet treatments for adults with epilepsy. She has published research on ketogenic dietary treatments and continues to work on research related to Vitamin D and epilepsy. While she has particular interest in dietary treatments in epilepsy she is well versed in all currently available medications and surgical treatments for epilepsy and works with patients to treat epilepsy medically, surgically, and wholistically. She is involved in research on new treatments for epilepsy as well.

    Dr. Falco-Walter is the Students Interested in Neurology (SIGN) faculty lead for the Department of Neurology and really enjoys working with undergraduates and medical students at the beginning of their careers. She is the course instructor for the Introduction to Neurology Seminar that runs in the fall for medical students that introduces students to all the subspecialty areas within Neurology.