School of Medicine
Showing 691-700 of 1,214 Results
-
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
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
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
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
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
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.
-
Vinod Menon
Rachael L. and Walter F. Nichols, MD, Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Education and of Neurology and Neurological Sciences
On Partial Leave from 12/16/2025 To 03/15/2026Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEXPERIMENTAL, CLINICAL AND THEORETICAL SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE
Cognitive neuroscience; Systems neuroscience; Cognitive development; Psychiatric neuroscience; Functional brain imaging; Dynamical basis of brain function; Nonlinear dynamics of neural systems. -
Mark Mercola
Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular) and, by courtesy, of Chemical and Systems Biology
BioDr. Mercola is Professor of Medicine and Professor in the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. He completed postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, was on the faculty in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School for 12 years, and later at the Sanford-Burnham-Prebys Institute and Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego before relocating to Stanford in 2015.
Prof. Mercola is known for identifying many of the factors that are responsible for inducing and forming the heart, including the discovery that Wnt inhibition is a critical step in cardiogenesis that provided the conceptual basis and reagents for the large-scale production of cardiovascular tissues from pluripotent stem cells. He has collaborated with medicinal chemists, optical engineers and software developers to pioneer the use of patient iPSC-cardiomyocytes for disease modeling, safety pharmacology and drug development. His academic research is focused on developing and using quantitative high throughput assays of patient-specific cardiomyocyte function to discover druggable targets for preserving contractile function in heart failure and promoting regeneration following ischemic injury. He co-established drug screening and assay development at the Conrad Prebys Drug Discovery Center (San Diego), which operated as one of 4 large screening centers of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Molecular Libraries screening initiative and continues as one of the largest academic drug screening centers.
Prof. Mercola received an NIH MERIT award for his work on heart formation. He holds numerous patents, including describing the invention of the first engineered dominant negative protein and small molecules for stem cell and cancer applications. He serves on multiple editorial and advisory boards, including Vala Sciences, Regencor, The Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research and the Human Biomolecular Research Institute. His laboratory is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Phospholamban Foundation and Fondation Leducq.
