Stanford University
Showing 1-10 of 25 Results
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Catherine Benedict, PhD
Clinical Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Medical Psychiatry
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research focuses on improving cancer survivorship through better understanding of long-term health outcomes and through the development of theoretically driven, evidence-based behavioral interventions to improve adjustment, risk management, and quality of life. To this end, I lead studies aimed to guide and support patient decision-making and self-management after cancer. Much of my work focuses on the experiences of young adults affected by cancer.
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Daniel Owen Fishman
Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Medical Psychiatry
Clinical Assistant Professor (By courtesy), Medicine - Blood & Marrow TransplantationBioAfter graduating from Vanderbilt Medical School, Dr. Fishman completed the Psychiatry Residency Program at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he served as Chief Resident and was lauded with the program’s sole Teaching Award. Thereafter, Dr. Fishman completed the Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship also at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. During his training, he also served as Chief Fellow was elected into Alpha Omega Alpha, Honors Medical Society. In the subsequent years, Dr. Fishman practiced as a consultation and liaison psychiatrist, simultaneously serving both academic and community hospitals in the Greater Pittsburgh Area. In his outpatient clinic, he managed and treated patients with complex issues linking the domains of neurology and psychiatry, and specialized in nonepileptic episodes.
Dr. Fishman joined the faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine in 2020 as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Since his appointment, Dr. Fishman has led medical psychiatry services on the medical/surgical units, intensive care units and in the emergency department at Stanford Hospital to provide psychiatric care for patients with acute diagnoses and provide graduate medical education to psychiatry, internal medicine, palliative care, oncology, and neurology trainees. His work on developing a framework for evidence-based best practice guidelines was recognized with a 2020 DLIN/Fischer finalist award.
Dr. Fishman is the appointed Chief of the Inpatient Proactive Psycho-Oncology Service, a service designed to proactively identify patients with psychopathology or who will require psychiatric intervention during their hospitalization. The service helps prevent development and escalation of psychopathology in the inpatient blood and marrow transplant and other cancer populations. His outpatient work is primarily as a psychiatric oncologist at the Stanford Cancer Center where he provides psychiatric consultation services and collaborates closely with his oncology colleagues to deliver comprehensive cancer care.
His clinical and scholarly interests include the interface of medicine and psychiatry, psycho-oncology, catatonia, neuropsychiatry, collaborative care models, psychotherapy for the medically ill, interdisciplinary and graduate medical education. -
Dina Ganji
Affiliate, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Visiting Scholar, Psychiatry and Behavioral SciencesBioDina Ganji, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, working at the intersection of clinical psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, and translational neuroscience. Her research focuses on integrating neuroimaging, neuromodulation techniques, and clinical phenotyping to advance precision psychiatry, with a particular emphasis on autism spectrum disorder, neurodevelopmental disorders, and cognitive neuroscience in children, as well as mood and substance use disorders.
She has a strong and growing interest in autism, pediatric neurocognition, and broader neurodevelopmental conditions, with a particular focus on understanding cognitive and behavioral mechanisms in early development and translating these insights into more individualized and effective interventions.
Dr. Ganji completed her Psychiatry Residency at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, where she also gained extensive clinical experience in the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of psychiatric disorders. She is a board-certified psychiatrist with clinical expertise in both inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care.
At Stanford University, she has contributed to multiple interdisciplinary research programs. In Dr. Maldonado’s lab, she serves as a research coordinator for large-scale clinical and longitudinal studies, including delirium outcomes in patients (LUCIDIFY study), psychosocial assessment in transplant candidates (SIPAT project), and clinical cohorts involving CAR-T and hematopoietic stem cell therapy.
Previously, in the Brain Stimulation Lab at Stanford, she gained hands-on experience in transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), including motor threshold assessment and clinical application of H-coil protocols in patients with OCD, depression and anxiety disorders. She also received training in functional MRI (fMRI) data acquisition and interpretation through advanced neuroscience courses.
In Iran, she served as Research and Development Lead at Atrin Clinic, where she integrated repetitive TMS (rTMS), pharmacological treatment, and clinical assessment tools for patients with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and substance use disorders, while systematically monitoring treatment outcomes.
Her research output includes multiple peer-reviewed publications in international journals, covering topics such as autism spectrum disorder, neuromodulation in bipolar disorder, congenital heart defects in vulnerable pediatric populations, neurocognitive effects of environmental exposure, and adjunctive treatments in psychiatric disorders.
Beyond research, Dr. Ganji is actively involved in academic service, including conference organization, neuropsychiatry committee activities, and peer review for scientific journals. She has also completed professional training in mind-body medicine approaches.
Dr. Ganji is deeply committed to patient-centered psychiatry and is particularly motivated by understanding autism, neurodevelopmental disorders, and pediatric cognitive neuroscience. She aims to bridge neuroscience and clinical psychiatry to develop more precise, individualized interventions that improve outcomes in children and patients with complex psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions. -
Matthew Gunther, MD, MA
Clinical Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Medical Psychiatry
Clinical Associate Professor (By courtesy), Medicine - Primary Care and Population HealthCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Gunther’s scholarly work focuses on neuropsychiatric syndromes arising in the context of medical illness, with particular emphasis on delirium, catatonia, psychopharmacology in the medically ill, and the psychiatric sequelae of critical illness. His research spans the identification, assessment, and management of acute brain dysfunction in hospitalized and critically ill populations, including studies evaluating delirium prediction tools, bedside diagnostic instruments, and neurorecovery outcomes following medical insults. He has contributed to the validation and clinical application of the Stanford Proxy Test for Delirium (S-PTD) and related delirium risk stratification efforts, and has authored systematic reviews and case-based scholarship addressing catatonia, alcohol withdrawal syndromes, and medication-related neurotoxicity. In parallel, Dr. Gunther’s work in integrated behavioral health and medical education examines how psychiatry-led, skills-based interventions can improve recognition of neuropsychiatric and trauma-related symptoms in primary care and inpatient medical settings. Across these domains, his research emphasizes translational, clinically grounded approaches that equip non-psychiatric clinicians to manage complex neuropsychiatric presentations with greater confidence and precision.
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Benjamin Joseph Hoover
Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Medical Psychiatry
BioDr. Hoover graduated with a BS in Biology and a minor in Chemistry from Duke University. After his undergraduate studies, he joined the Leppla Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health as an Intramural Research Training Awardee. While there, he investigated the use of engineered anthrax toxin as a chemotherapeutic, and he graduated from the NIH Academy, with extensive coursework in health disparities. Then he returned to the Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his MD in 2017. While in medical school, his interest in infectious disease evolved into curiosity about the gut-brain axis. He investigated gut sensation and its role in behavior using 3D electron microscopy, ultimately publishing a novel characterization of tuft cell ultrastructure.
Given his growing interest in behavior, Dr. Hoover pursued psychiatry residency at the MGH McLean program. During this time, he was accepted into the R-25 funded Physician Scientist Training Program and joined the Kahn Laboratory at the Joslin Diabetes Center. He employed an iPSC model to investigate the role of insulin signaling dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease pathogenesis. His clinical interests also began to focus on the intersection of medical and psychiatric disease. He served as a chief resident and won the Anne Alonso Award for Psychotherapy and the Residency Neuroscience Award. After residency, he was accepted into the MGH Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship.
After graduating from fellowship in 2022, Dr. Hoover joined the Stanford University School of Medicine faculty as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. As part of the Medical Psychiatry division, he consults on hospitalized patients with psychiatric comorbidities within intensive care units and general medical and surgical floors. The interface between endocrinology and psychiatry remains a particular area of clinical and research interest, and he brings years of previous laboratory experience in this area to his clinical practice. -
Filza Hussain MD, FACLP
Clinical Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Medical Psychiatry
Clinical Associate Professor (By courtesy), Surgery - Abdominal TransplantationBioDr. Hussain completed her medical education in Karachi, Pakistan, at the Aga Khan University in 2005 and travelled to the US to pursue her interest in Psychiatry. During residency at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota she was awarded the Mayo clinic M.J Martin award for excellence in CL psychiatry. It was at Mayo that she solidified her interest and identity as a Consultation Liaison Psychiatrist. Eliminating Mind body dualism while educating others and addressing stigma against psychiatry seemed like an effortless choice and so she pursued a CL fellowship at Columbia University in New York.
Visa obligations took her first to the UK where she utilized her experience in evaluating CL service performance in large teaching hospitals in the NHS. She subsequently moved back to the US to serve as the sole outpatient provider for eleven different counties in Northwest Wisconsin with a panel of over 1500 patients at a Mayo clinic satellite. During this time, she was an active board member of NAMI, taught psychopathology in Crisis Intervention Training for the Eau Claire, and Chippewa Police departments and avidly contributed to international health blogs and newspaper articles with an aim to decrease stigma against psychiatry
In Pursuit of a stimulating academic environment and a return to her true passion, CL psychiatry, she joined Stanford as a Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine in 2017. As member of the Education Committee and as of 2022, the CLP Fellowship Associate Program Director, She has been active in helping to restructure the fellowship education experience, initiating several new seminars including the immersion series, the book seminar, and organizing the Chief of service rounds. Her clinical focus is transplant psychiatry, and she serves as the liaison to the Liver and Kidney transplant programs at Stanford. She continues to be engaged with the community and currently participates in the Liver Education and Awareness Program(LEAP) , an endeavor educating patients about Fatty Liver disease. Other areas of clinical/research interests include Personality disorders, Suicidology, Cultural Psychiatry and medical pedagogy. She is also working with Dr. Maldonado in developing the SIPAT-D, a tool for evaluation of live organ donors. -
Manuela Kogon
Clinical Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Medical Psychiatry
BioDr. Kogon is a Clinical Professor and Integrative Medicine Internist with both training and experience in Internal Medicine, Psychiatry and Integrative Medicine. She serves as the Medical Director of Integrative Psycho-Oncology at SCIM and specializes in mind-body medicine and non-pharmacological treatment of illness distress.
