School of Medicine
Showing 121-136 of 136 Results
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Zachary David Threlkeld
Clinical Associate Professor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Clinical Associate Professor (By courtesy), NeurosurgeryBioDr. Threlkeld cares for critically ill patients with acute neurologic illness, including traumatic brain injury, stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, and epilepsy. He completed his residency training in neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, and joined the Stanford Neurocritical Care program after completing fellowship training in neurocritical care at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He has a particular clinical and research interest in traumatic brain injury. His research uses advanced imaging modalities like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to better understand disorders of consciousness.
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Maxine Umeh Garcia
Instructor, Neurosurgery
BioMaxine was born and raised in Sacramento, CA and transferred to UC Merced in 2007 after attending a community college for 2 years. She received her B.S. in Developmental Biology with a minor in Psychology in 2010. During the last year of her undergrad, Maxine was invited to do research in the lab of Dr. Michael Cleary, studying nervous system development. Because of this research experience, Maxine decided to stay at UC Merced to pursue her Master’s in Quantitative and Systems Biology, graduating in 2013. Immediately after graduating, she started her Ph.D. at UC Davis, where her research centered on triple negative breast cancer – a type of breast cancer that has a high incidence in Black and African women.
After completing her PhD in Biochemistry, Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology with an emphasis in Translational Research in 2019, Maxine became a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in the department of Neurosurgery. Dr. Umeh Garcia’s research focuses on breast cancers that metastasize (or travel) to the brain. Maxine was recently promoted to an instructor position in her department after receiving a major career development award from the National Cancer Institute (K99/R00), which will fund the remainder of her postdoctoral research and provide 3 years of funding for Maxine to establish her own independent research lab. Using her background in bench research, informatics, and translational research, Dr. Umeh Garcia hopes to bring together biologists, data scientists, and clinicians to make important advances in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Additionally, as a women and underrepresented minority, Dr. Umeh Garcia is keenly interested in mentoring women and underrepresented students, and in developing novel strategic approaches to increasing diversity in biomedical sciences and academic research. -
Anand Veeravagu
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and, by courtesy, of Orthopaedic Surgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe focus of my laboratory is to utilize precision medicine techniques to improve the diagnosis and treatment of neurologic conditions. From traumatic brain injury to spinal scoliosis, the ability to capture detailed data regarding clinical symptoms and treatment outcomes has empowered us to do better for patients. Utilize data to do better for patients, that’s what we do.
Stanford Neurosurgical Ai and Machine Learning Lab
http://med.stanford.edu/neurosurgery/research/AILab.html -
Chitra Venkatasubramanian, MBBS, MD, MSc, FNCS
Clinical Professor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Clinical Professor (By courtesy), NeurosurgeryCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsI am interested in the study of the radiological characteristics and temporal profile of edema/ tissue injury in the perihematomal area around spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage. I am also interested in developing protocols for emergent reversal of anticoagulation in a life-threatening hemorrhage situation.
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Hannes Vogel MD
Professor of Pathology and of Pediatrics (Pediatric Genetics) and, by courtesy, of Neurosurgery, Neurology and of Comparative Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research interests include nerve and muscle pathology, mitochondrial diseases, pediatric neurooncology, and transgenic mouse pathology.
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Xinnan Wang
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMechanisms underlying mitochondrial dynamics and function, and their implications in neurological disorders.
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Matthew Willsey
Clinical Instructor, Neurosurgery
BioMatthew Willsey is originally from Greenwood, Indiana. He attended MIT, where he received B.S. and M.Eng. degrees in Electrical Engineering with a research focus in digital signal processing. He later attended medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and completed his neurosurgery residency at the University of Michigan in 2022. During his residency, he completed an enfolded CAST-approved fellowship in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. He is currently completing a post-graduate, one-year fellowship in stereotactic/functional neurosurgery and epilepsy at Stanford University under the direction of Dr. Jaimie Henderson. His clinical interests include deep brain stimulation, MR-guided focused ultrasound, epilepsy, pain, and spine.
His research has largely focused on neuromodulation and intracortical brain-computer interfaces (iBCI). He completed a PhD under Drs. Parag Patil and Cynthia Chestek during his resident research time plus an additional leave-of-absence year. He is currently working in the Neural Prosthetics Laboratories at Stanford where he has continued to investigate using iBCIs to restore fine motor control in human participants with paralysis enrolled in the BrainGate2 clinical trial. -
Thomas J. Wilson
Clinical Associate Professor, Neurosurgery
BioDr. Thomas J. Wilson was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He attended the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, earning his MD with highest distinction. While a medical student, he was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Training Fellowship and spent a year in the lab of Dr. Rakesh Singh at the University of Nebraska. He was also elected to the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. He completed his residency training in neurological surgery at the University of Michigan and was mentored by Dr. Lynda Yang and Dr. John McGillicuddy in peripheral nerve surgery. Following his residency, he completed a fellowship in peripheral nerve surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, working with Dr. Robert Spinner. He is now Clinical Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Peripheral Nerve Surgery at Stanford University. He also holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, with focused certificates in Clinical Trials and Health Finance and Management. His research interests include peripheral nerve outcomes research, clinical trials advancing options for patients with peripheral nerve pathologies and spinal cord injuries, and translational research focused on improved imaging techniques to assist in diagnosing nerve pain and other peripheral nerve conditions. His clinical practice encompasses the treatment of all peripheral nerve pathologies, including entrapment neuropathies, nerve tumors, nerve injuries (including brachial plexus injuries, upper and lower extremity nerve injuries), and nerve pain. Dr. Wilson enjoys working in multi-disciplinary teams to solve complex problems of the peripheral nervous system. His wife, Dr. Monique Wilson, is a practicing dermatologist in the Bay Area.
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Albert J. Wong, M.D.
Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur goal is to define targets for cancer therapeutics by identifying alterations in signal transduction proteins. We first identified a naturally occurring mutant EGF receptor (EGFRvIII) and then delineated its unique signal transduction pathway. This work led to the identification of Gab1 followed by the discovery that JNK is constitutively active in tumors. We intiated using altered proteins as the target for vaccination, where an EGFRvIII based vaccine appears to be highly effective.
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Quan Zhou
Instructor, Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCurrent Research Focus: molecular targeted theranostic imaging of brain tumor and enhanced drug delivery
Areas of Insterests: molecular imaging, theranostics, fluorescence-guided surgery, brain tumor, drug delivery
Dr. Zhou has made substantial contributions to the growing biomedical research field of Molecular Imaging. Molecular imaging emerged in the mid twentieth century as a highly specialized discipline at the intersection of molecular biology and in vivo imaging, focusing on imaging molecules of medical interest within intact living subjects. Dr. Zhou’s research addresses some of the nation’s most pressing issues related to the development of effective approaches for accurate detection of human diseases and improving their treatment outcome. Her innovations in molecular imaging technology enables the visualization, characterization, and quantification of biologic processes taking place at the cellular and subcellular levels. The multiple and numerous potentialities of Quan’s work are applicable to the diagnosis of diseases such as cancer, neurological and cardiovascular diseases. Her strong education background in biological sciences and biomedical engineering followed by postdoctoral training in translational and clinical research have helped her develop multiple disease-specific molecular probes and imaging strategies for early cancer diagnosis, image-guided surgery, therapeutic delivery prediction and at-risk cardiovascular plaque detection. Her research also contributes to improving the treatment of these disorders by testing and optimizing the execution of new interventions. Her work is expected to have a major economic impact due to earlier disease detection and personalized therapy.
Dr. Zhou’s research has led to emergence of novel solutions and opportunities, in particular, for molecular imaging of cancer and other diseases, for discovering, leveraging and integration of cancer biomarker and tumor microenvironment information, and for novel approaches to acquire real-time high-resolution contrast enhanced visualization of tumor margin and optimization based on imaging depth, quality and speed. Dr. Zhou has been able to formulate the involved clinical and biological problems into biomedical engineering frameworks and find ways to exploit a variety of modern techniques and approaches from photoacoustic imaging, fluorescence-guided surgery, micro-electromechanical systems and therapeutic delivery strategies in developing elegant and effective solutions. Her work in the Neurosurgery Department and Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford involves research related to developing tumor-specific molecular probes, advanced imaging methods and therapeutic delivery systems for adult and pediatric patients with malignant brain cancers to improve margin detection, enhance resection accuracy, and improve treatment outcome. -
J. Bradley Zuchero
Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery
On Partial Leave from 03/06/2023 To 07/02/2023Current Research and Scholarly InterestsGlia are a frontier of neuroscience, and overwhelming evidence from the last decade shows that they are essential regulators of all aspects of the nervous system. The Zuchero Lab aims to uncover how glial cells regulate neural development and how their dysfunction contributes to diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) and in injuries like stroke.
Although glia represent more than half of the cells in the human brain, fundamental questions remain to be answered. How do glia develop their highly specialized morphologies and interact with neurons to powerfully control form and function of the nervous system? How is this disrupted in neurodegenerative diseases and after injury? By bringing cutting-edge cell biology techniques to the study of glia, we aim to uncover how glia help sculpt and regulate the nervous system and test their potential as novel, untapped therapeutic targets for disease and injury.
We are particularly interested in myelin, the insulating sheath around neuronal axons that is lost in diseases like MS. How do oligodendrocytes- the glial cell that produces myelin in the central nervous system- form and remodel myelin, and why do they fail to regenerate myelin in disease? Our current projects aim to use cell biology and neuroscience approaches to answer these fundamental questions. Ultimately we hope our work will lead to much-needed therapies to promote remyelination in patients. -
Corinna Zygourakis, MD
Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy goal is to translate research into real-world action and decision-making so that my work can impact patients and the institutions in which they receive care. With a research focus on healthcare cost and quality of care, I approach neurosurgery in a unique way—one that applies business operations, economics, and healthcare delivery principles to our field. I have pursued formal LEAN business training, and believe in the importance of working together with other departments and administrators, as well as physicians and surgeons on the hospital and national level, to effect change. During my residency, I developed and led a multi-departmental prospective study at UCSF called OR SCORE (OR Surgical Cost Reduction Project) that brought together surgeons from the neurosurgery, orthopedics and ENT departments with nurses and administrators. OR SCORE successfully reduced surgical supply costs by nearly one million dollars in its first year by providing >60 surgeons with price transparency scorecards. This work led to a first-author publication in JAMA Surgery, but more importantly, set the foundation for further quality improvement and cost reduction efforts across the UCSF hospital system.
A volunteer neurosurgical mission trip to Guadalajara, Mexico, where limited resources create an OR environment that is strikingly more frugal than the U.S., inspired me to lead another project aimed at quantifying and reducing operating room waste at UCSF. I have also conducted research looking at the safety and outcomes of overlapping surgery, as well as several projects to define the factors underlying variation in cost for neurosurgical care using UCSF’s hospital data and national databases like the National Inpatient Sample, Vizient (formerly known as University Health Consortium), and Medicare.
As a clinical fellow at Johns Hopkins, I continued and expanded these research efforts. I designed and implemented an Enhanced Recovery after Surgery (ERAS) protocol at the Johns Hopkins Bayview hospital. This protocol standardized care for our spine patients, emphasizing pre-operative rehabilitation, psychiatric and nutritional assessments, and smoking cessation, as well as intra- and post-operative multi-modal pain therapy, early mobilization, and standardized antibiotic and bowel regimens. I also collaborated with engineers in the Johns Hopkins Carnegie Center for Surgical Innovation to develop better algorithms for intra-operative CT imaging, and provided assistance with operations to a basic science study looking at the role of cerebrospinal fluid drainage and duraplasty in a porcine model of spinal cord injury.
At Stanford, I am building a research group focused on: (1) perfecting paradigms for delivery of high-end technology in spinal care, including robotics and navigation, (2) implementing cost and quality strategies in large healthcare systems, and (3) computational analysis of big-data to effect real-time risk stratification and decision making in spine surgery. I'm excited to collaborate with my peers across surgical and medical departments, as well as business and engineering colleagues.
