School of Medicine
Showing 1-32 of 32 Results
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Dayan J. Li, MD, PhD
Clinical Scholar, Dermatology
Postdoctoral Scholar, Pediatric SurgeryCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsWound healing, cutaneous fibrosis
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Yi Liu
Postdoctoral Scholar, General Surgery
BioDr. Liu is a postdoc fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also a Chinese board-certificated, fellowship-trained clinician with demonstrated clinical and research expertise in Critical Care Medicine and interdisciplinary studies of nanomedicine.
She received her residency and fellowship training (Emergency Medicine & Intensive Care Medicine) at Chongqing Medical University (China) and sub-internship in Sorbonne Université (Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, France) and Tiantan Hospital (Beijing, China). In addition to her MD degree, She undertook PhD training in nanomedicine for cancer/infectious disease early detection and to identify potential new treatments for severe infectious/cancer patients. Her postdoctoral training in nano-enabled therapeutic at Stanford has helped advance her knowledge of how nanotechnology improve the application of nanomedicine in early diagnosis of diseases. She has published numerous articles on a wide range of nanoplatforms-related topics. She has also received several academic and teaching awards related to clinical skills and research on molecular imaging. -
Adel Mutahar
Postdoctoral Scholar, General and Vascular Surgery
BioDr. Adel Z. I. Mutahar is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Surgery at Stanford University, working under the mentorship of Dr. Frederick M. Dirbas. His research focuses on translational breast cancer biology and emerging radiotherapy technologies, with an emphasis on tumor–microenvironment interactions, immuno-oncology, and preclinical therapeutic development. His academic journey spans three countries—beginning in Yemen, advancing through India, and now progressing at Stanford—reflecting his commitment to impactful cancer research and global scientific advancement.
Dr. Mutahar began his career in Yemen, earning his Bachelor’s degree in Medical Laboratory Sciences before joining Abs Community College as a faculty member. From 2007–2013, he held several academic leadership roles, including Academic Director, Head of Evaluation, and Assistant Dean of Students, where he modernized curriculum, expanded hands-on diagnostic training, and strengthened laboratory education infrastructure in resource-limited settings. His work contributed to building a more skilled medical diagnostics workforce and improving pathways for laboratory science education.
Awarded a prestigious national merit scholarship, Dr. Mutahar continued his graduate and doctoral training in India, completing his M.S. and Ph.D. in Biotechnology with a focus on triple-negative breast cancer. During his doctoral work, he developed 3D tumor spheroid models and combinatorial therapeutic strategies, demonstrating synergy between anti-angiogenic agents and chemotherapy in TNBC. He further advanced this research by creating an orthotopic murine model to investigate metastatic progression and demonstrated that knockdown of the MTA1 gene in mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) significantly suppressed TNBC invasion, angiogenesis, and metastatic spread, introducing a promising stromal-targeted therapeutic concept for aggressive breast cancer. This work earned recognition through travel grants, conference presentations, and a Best Poster Award. His scientific adaptability was further demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he uncovered a novel interaction between SARS-CoV-2 Spike RBD and VEGF signaling.
At Stanford, his work emphases on FLASH radiotherapy, an ultrahigh-dose-rate modality with the potential to widen the therapeutic window by minimizing normal-tissue toxicity while maintaining tumor control. Working within Dr. Dirbas’s translational breast oncology program, Dr. Mutahar employs patient-derived xenografts, orthotopic murine models, spatial transcriptomics, single-cell RNA sequencing, and immune profiling to dissect the biological mechanisms governing treatment response. His research integrates multi-omics analysis to map early and late radiotherapy injury pathways—including senescence, apoptosis and fibrosis. His goal is to develop mechanism-driven radio-immunotherapy strategies and durable FLASH-RT combination regimens that can be translated into clinical trials for breast cancer, improving therapeutic durability, minimizing toxicity, and ultimately enhancing patient outcomes.
Dr. Mutahar’s long-term vision is to establish an independent laboratory at the intersection of radiobiology, immuno-oncology, and translational therapeutics. Guided by Dr. Dirbas’s mentorship and shaped by multidisciplinary experience across three continents, he aims to develop biologically informed treatment strategies that eradicate tumors while preserving normal tissue and immune integrity—ultimately improving quality of life and survival for women with aggressive breast cancers. -
Kenneth Nieser
Postdoctoral Scholar, General Surgery
BioKen Nieser is a postdoctoral research fellow through the Big Data-Scientist Training Enhancement Program (BD-STEP) at the Palo Alto VA and in the Department of Surgery, Stanford School of Medicine. Ken received a BA in Physics and Mathematics from Swarthmore College and a PhD in Epidemiology with a minor in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During his PhD, Ken developed and applied statistical methods for improving algorithmic fairness of data analyses used to inform screening and treatment of mental illnesses. These projects included development of an approach for detecting sample subsets with differential psychological symptom patterns and a sample representation reweighting method for improving the precision of subgroup-specific treatment effect estimation.
Ken’s current research interests are in health care inequities, quality measurement, and algorithmic fairness. During his fellowship, Ken will be working on investigating the statistical reliability of quality measures and decomposing health care disparities to provide practical information for resolving inequities, with applications in mental health care and surgical care. -
Calvin Perumalla
Postdoctoral Scholar, General Surgery
BioDr. Calvin Perumalla joined the Stanford's TECI Center team as a postdoctoral researcher in February 2021. He received his Masters and Doctorate degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of South Florida. His graduate research work involved building a novel cardiac rhythm monitor with enhanced diagnostic capabilities. He was also involved in building machine learning models to detect cardiac abnormalities. Dr. Perumalla later spent two years working at a late-stage startup where he was involved in building AI models to detect anomalies in computer networks. He is passionate about using AI to improve the quality of human life and his current research interests include Computer Vision, Image Segmentation and Surgical Data Science.
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Yann Sakref
Postdoctoral Scholar, General Surgery
BioYann Sakref is a Postdoctoral Scholar in General Surgery at Stanford University, working within the Knowlton Lab. With a passion for interdisciplinary sciences and advancing medical biotechnology and patient care, Yann is developing clinical and AI solutions as part of an ARPA-H-funded project under Dr. Knowlton's supervision. His work focuses on creating computer vision models for surgical assistance and contributing to the collaborative development of innovative tools by working closely with clinical, engineering, and AI teams. He also works closely with collaborators at the S-SPIRE Center.
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Saurabh Sharma
Postdoctoral Scholar, General and Vascular Surgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe develop strategies to transport immunotherapeutic molecules across the blood-brain barrier for imaging and treating brain metastatic cancer. Currently, under the mentorship of Dr. Amanda Kirane, I have continued my work in cancer-targeted nanotechnology for the treatment of melanoma brain metastases. Immunotherapy of small peptides, small molecules.
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Palca Shibale
Postdoctoral Scholar, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
BioShibale, Palca is a post-doctoral fellow in the Hagey Laboratory under mentorship of Dr. Derrick Wan and Michael Longaker. She earned her BS in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Washington (UW), her MS in Medical Physiology and Biophysics at Case Western University and her MD from UW. She has previously conducted translational research on drug efficacy and clinical research in trauma and vascular surgery. Her current works focus on understanding the mechanisms of tissue regeneration and fibrosis with nano materials and as well, the roles of fibroblast subpopulations in the foreign body response model
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Ken Suzuki
Postdoctoral Scholar, General Surgery
BioKen Suzuki is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University's Department of Surgery. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz in June 2024. Before UC Santa Cruz, he earned his MA in Economics from Hitotsubashi University in 2017 and his BA in Economics from Yokohama National University in 2015. His research interests include health economics, applied microeconomics, econometrics, and statistical causal inference. His research utilizes large administrative datasets from the Veterans Health Administration (VA) to examine how health policies affect patient healthcare utilization and health outcomes.
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Humza Thobani
Postdoctoral Scholar, Pediatric Surgery
BioHumza is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Division of Pediatric Surgery at Stanford University. He earned his medical degree from the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan in 2023. Prior to joining Stanford, he had completed a dedicated research fellowship in pediatric surgery, also at the Aga Khan University, where he was named Best Research Fellow in 2024.
Humza's research interests revolve around congenital surgical anomalies, pediatric solid tumors, and pediatric inflammatory bowel diseases, with a focus on leveraging big data and machine learning methods to study rare pediatric conditions. -
Antonio Tomasso
Postdoctoral Scholar, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
BioAntonio Tomasso is an NWO Rubicon Postdoctoral Scholar. As part of his MSc in Medical Molecular and Cellular Biotechnology at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, he explored the immunomodulatory and neurotrophic roles of neural stem cells (NSCs) following spinal cord injury. As a Research Assistant at Karolinska Institute, he delved into the signaling pathways required for NSC activation and migration after spinal cord injury, and the limited regenerative abilities of mouse and human heart.
During his PhD, he investigated the molecular mechanisms of tissue regeneration in planarians, axolotls and spiny mice. He conducted research as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Kentucky and the Hubrecht Institute.
His research demonstrated that MAPK/ERK signaling acts as a molecular switch between regeneration and fibrosis in adult mammals and can be activated to stimulate a regenerative response, including new hair follicle formation, in scarring wounds.
He contributed to a pioneering study showing that spiny mice can recover heart function after infarct through enhanced angiogenesis, ECM remodeling and epicardium regeneration. He also played a key role in spatial transcriptomic studies that defined regenerative and fibrotic gene signatures in spiny mice, laboratory mice and gerbils.
He earned a PhD cum laude in Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine.
He has been awarded an NWO Dutch Research Council Rubicon Postdoctoral grant to conduct research on the molecular drivers of fibroblast activation in wound healing and organ fibrosis.
His ultimate research aim is to crack the code of tissue regeneration and rejuvenation, reversing organ scarring and preventing fibrosis in injuries and pathological conditions, through the identification of therapeutic targets for enhanced tissue repair and functional recovery.
Driven by his innate curiosity and passion for science, he loves tackling new challenges, thinking outside the box, and building interdisciplinary collaborations to push forward the boundaries of knowledge.
His career goal is to serve as a group leader, fostering a collaborative environment where everyone can thrive, achieve their goals and leave a lasting impact through community-building and scientific discoveries for the benefit of humankind. -
Banita Verma
Postdoctoral Scholar, General and Vascular Surgery
BioI am Banita Verma, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, currently working with Dr. Fredrick M. Dirbas at the Department of Surgery. Our research focus is to understand the type of cell death and the nature of immune responses triggered by FLASH versus conventional radiotherapy in various murine breast cancer models. Additionally, we aim to explore the role of DAMPs released by dying cells in generating immune responses after both FLASH and conventional radiotherapy. Furthermore, we are interested in studying the mechanism behind the low toxicity of the FLASH compared to conventional radiotherapy to the adjacent non-cancerous tissue. To accomplish this goal, our laboratory is actively collaborating with Dr. Bill Loo, who holds great expertise in the field of radiation oncology.
Before joining Stanford University, I served as a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden from 2021-2023. My research aimed to study the activation mechanism of Cholineacetyltransferase (ChAT), a pivotal enzyme in acetylcholine synthesis. This enzyme is known to be hypoactive in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Our group successfully synthesized novel compounds capable of enhancing ChAT activity.
I completed my doctoral research in cancer biology at the Department of Experimental Medicine and Biotechnology, PGIMER Chandigarh, India, in 2021. My work was the evaluation of role of TNF-α mediated Necroptosis in breast cancer cells. My primary research interests are cancer biology and cell death pathways.
