School of Medicine


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  • Maryam Amirahmadi

    Maryam Amirahmadi

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    BioDr. Maryam Amirahmadi is a microsurgery expert and postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. She obtained her Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree from Hamadan University of Medical Sciences. After more than a year of experience as a Family and Emergency Physician, she spent around 4 years at the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences where she served as a pediatric and adult Cardiac Intensive Care physician and received training in cardiovascular surgery at Namazi and Faghihi hospitals. She then spent a year in the Department of Vascular Surgery at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, serving as a postdoctoral researcher and performing microsurgery on animals, with her research focused on therapeutic strategies to improve neovascularization after limb ischemia. Dr. Amirahmadi joined Stanford Cardiovascular Institute in 2022 where she is now a postdoctoral research fellow under the supervision of Prof. Philip S. Tsao, a renowned cardiovascular scientist. Her research interests and practical expertise include Microsurgery, and the effect of e-cigarette vaping on factors of inflammatory or immune pathways that can subsequently be related to the molecular mechanisms involved in angiogenesis and arteriogenesis in the murine model of hindlimb ischemia, as well as the mechanisms of e-cigarette and nicotine’s effects in augmenting Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) in rodent models of aortic aneurysm, including porcine pancreatic elastase-induced AAA. Dr. Maryam Amirahmadi and her colleagues are currently investigating the transgenerational effects of vaping/nicotine on abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) risk.

  • Adrian Matias Bacong

    Adrian Matias Bacong

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAdrian M. Bacong, PhD, MPH is a social epidemiologist by training. His research seeks to identify social and structural factors that underlie health inequities by race, ethnicity, and immigration status. Specifically, his work has explored the role of socioeconomic factors in explaining health disparities by immigrant legal status and visa type. Furthermore, Adrian is interested in the effects of immigration on health. He received a NIH F31 award (1F31MD015931-01A1) to examine factors affecting the health of Filipino migrants to the U.S. compared to Filipinos remaining in the Philippines.

    Adrian has also examined the intersections of race, ethnicity, and immigration status among older adults. Finally, Adrian written upon the role of data disaggregation as a method of public health critical race praxis. Currently, Adrian is researching the role of social and policy level factors underlying health disparities among immigrants.

  • Pauline Brochet

    Pauline Brochet

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    BioPauline Brochet is a French scientist from Souraide, France. She completed her undergraduate studies in Molecular, Cellular and Physiological Biology (BSc, Université Clermont-Auvergne) and earned a Master's degree in Software Development and Data Analysis (MSc, Aix-Marseille Université). Pauline pursued a PhD at TAGC (Theories and Approaches for Genomic Complexity) in Marseille, France.

    Under the supervision of Dr. Christophe Chevillard and Dr. Lionel Spinelli, Pauline integrated multi-omics data from human heart tissue to investigate the pathogenic processes associated with Chagas Disease Cardiomyopathy (CCC). Notably, she contributed to the development of ChagasDB, the first database associating key features with the different stages of Chagas disease. Her research identified the involvement of mitochondrial DNA mutations, non-coding RNA, transcription factors, and DNA methylation in various pathogenic processes, all leading to the progression of CCC.

    Currently, at Stanford University, under the guidance of Dr. Matthew Wheeler and Dr. Daniel Katz, Pauline is conducting postdoctoral research on multi-omics data analysis as part of the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC). Her work focuses on identifying key covariable features associated with physical exercise, with the ultimate goal of discovering exercise-mimetic drugs that could help prevent heart diseases.

  • Ming Li (Estella) Chen

    Ming Li (Estella) Chen

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    BioI am an MD from Chung Shan Medical University, Taiwan. Before coming to Stanford, I obtained my MS degree in epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, where I completed graduate training in clinical, pharmacologic, and genetic epidemiology, and pursued advanced skills in biostatistics and causal inference.

    My past research focused on real-world epidemiology studies using patient registries and national health insurance databases to elucidate the predictors or risk factors of immunologic diseases. For my graduate study, I conducted pharmacoepidemiology studies using electronic health record (EHR) data to elucidate the predictors of anti-drug antibodies development and its correlation to autoimmunity, to identify the generation of immunogenicity that may impact the effectiveness of monoclonal antibody therapies in individuals with autoimmune diseases. I gained experience in genetic data manipulation to investigate polymorphisms in response to monoclonal antibody therapies in asthma patients.

    At Stanford, I am involved in research on the identification of molecular determinants of cardiometabolic diseases.

  • Joshua Gillard

    Joshua Gillard

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    BioDr. Josh Gillard is a Canadian biomedical data scientist with experience in bioinformatics, machine learning, and immunology. After completing a BSc and a MSc in Experimental Medicine at McGill university, he relocated to the Netherlands for his PhD in bioinformatics at Radboud University in Nijmegen. During his PhD, he gained experience analyzing and interpreting complex immunological data (bulk and single-cell transcriptomics, high-dimensional cytometry, high-throughput proteomics) derived from human observational or intervention studies (vaccination and experimental human infection) in order to discover molecular and cellular correlates of clinically important endpoints such as disease severity, symptom progression, and antibody responses. In 2022, Josh relocated to Stanford to join the Gaudilliere lab to develop and apply multi-omic data integration and machine learning techniques, establishing that early gestational immune dysregulation can predict preterm birth. Since 2024, in the Ashley lab, Josh is focused on applying deep learning models to investigate aberrant splicing in cardiovascular disease.

  • Bruna Gomes

    Bruna Gomes

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe increasing availability of very large datasets, along with recent advances in deep learning based tools for automatic extraction of cardiac traits, has led to the discovery of further common variants associated with cardiac disease. However, the genetic underpinnings of valvular heart disease remains understudied. I am interested in developing deep learning techniques to automatically extract cardiac flow information to facilitate genome-wide association studies of cardiac flow traits.

  • Hirotaka Ieki

    Hirotaka Ieki

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    BioCardiologist in Japan.
    Research interest: precision medicine in cardiovascular disease. Genomics, Exposomics.

  • Hiroyuki Inoue

    Hiroyuki Inoue

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    BioPhysician-scientist passionate about bridging research findings and clinical practice
    - Board certified cardiologist with 10+ years clinical experience, focused on cardiovascular diseases including heart failure, ischemic heart disease, arrhythmia, and general internal medicine
    - Experience of 400+ cases as the primary operator in percutaneous coronary intervention, catheter ablation, and cardiac device implantation
    - Research expertise in extracelluler vesicles, regenerative medicine, genome editing and gene therapy

    Dr. Inoue joined the Yang lab in 2022. His research focuses on developing novel therapeutics for heart failure by targeting cardiomyocyte metabolism

  • Arash Keshavarzi

    Arash Keshavarzi

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    BioArash Keshavarzi, PhD, has a background in Molecular Biology and AI drug discovery, with experience bridging AI and biotechnology. He used to be the CSO of Nucleus Genomics, a company that has raised over $30 million in funding from prominent investors including Founders Fund. He is the Co-founder of Lumos Bio, a UCSF spin-off focused on pioneering RNA-targeting cancer therapeutics, and also a co-founder of Entelligent.ai, driving innovation in AI driven intelligence. Additionally, Arash is actively involved in venture capital and investment as an Investment Fellow at Mubadala Capital, where he builds investment thesis, sources deals, and helps both biotech and AI teams. His career uniquely blends deep scientific expertise, entrepreneurial acumen, and strategic investment insights.

    He has published over 10 academic papers in AI Therapeutics fields
    He has published two book chapter in AI medicine
    He has two patents in AI for small molecule drug discovery, one approved, one pending

  • Pik Fang Kho

    Pik Fang Kho

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    BioI obtained my PhD in genetic epidemiology at Queensland University of Technology (Australia), where my research was focused on using genetic and genomic approaches to identify risk factors for endometrial cancer. During my graduate studies, I gained experience in large-scale genetic association studies and leveraging the correlation between diseases in genetic studies to identify novel genetic variants associated with endometrial cancer. I also developed expertise in various statistical genetic approaches in multi-omics data, including fine-mapping and colocalization analyses, to prioritize candidate causal variants and genes. I also gained extensive experience in genetic causal inference analysis to infer causality between risk factors and health outcomes.

    My research focus since moving to Stanford has been the identification of genetic and non-genetic determinants of cardiometabolic diseases. I am currently involved in projects including large-scale genetic association studies, multi-trait analysis with correlated traits, development and validation of polygenic risk scores, integrative analyses with multi-omics data, as well as Mendelian randomization analyses to advance our understanding of the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to cardiometabolic diseases.

  • Hector Rodrigo Mendez

    Hector Rodrigo Mendez

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Cardiovascular Medicine

    BioDr. Hector Rodrigo Mendez is a Medical Geneticist from Argentina. Rodrigo completed a residency program in Medical Genetics at Centro Nacional de Genetica Medica – ANLIS (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and a Master’s program in Medical Molecular Biology at Buenos Aires University.

    Rodrigo continued his scientific career at a German Genomic Start-up, working as a human geneticist and providing his experience in rare disorders, genomic data (WGS/WES/gene panels) analysis, variant interpretation, and its integration with a deep focus on genotype-phenotype correlation.

    Rodrigo’s areas of expertise are rare disorders, NGS technology, Whole Genome Sequencing analysis, and ACMG interpretation guidelines, and his research aims are:

    - Collection and analysis of clinical data through deep-learning phenotyping approaches.
    - Multi-omic data integration to elucidate complex and rare genetic disorders.
    - Drive progress in curing rare genetic diseases, particularly among critically sick infants.

    At Stanford University, under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Wheeler, he is conducting his postdoctoral research studies to achieve his scientific goals.