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BioAdam Tobin is a screenwriter teaching courses in short and feature film writing, TV pilots, script analysis, fiction film production, and adaptation. He created the half-hour comedy series About a Girl and the reality series Best Friend's Date for Viacom's The-N network (now TeenNick), won an Emmy Award for Discovery Channel’s Cash Cab, and has written for ABC, ESPN, and the National Basketball Association. He was a story analyst for Jim Henson Pictures and has taught story and pitching seminars at Dreamworks Animation, Twentieth Century Fox/Blue Sky Studios, and Aardman Animations. He also teaches in the Arts Intensive program and offers an Improvisationally Speaking course in Stanford Continuing Studies.

His play She Persisted: The Musical, was a New York Times Critic's Pick and winner of the Off-Broadway Alliance award for Best Family Show. His new musical The Pigeon Gets a Big Time Holiday Extavaganza, co-written with and based on the characters of Mo Willems, bestselling author of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and the Elephant & Piggie books, will open in six cities in November 2025.

Robert D. Tobin

WellMD & WellPhD Program Coordinator, SoM - Physician Wellness

Sara L. (Sally) Tobin

Sr Research Scholar, Pediatrics - Center for Biomedical Ethics

Current Research and Scholarly InterestsTobin is a Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. She obtained her Ph.D. in Developmental Biology from the University of Washington and did postdoctoral research in Genetics at the University of California, Berkeley and in Biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. She became a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine in 1983 and moved to Stanford University in 1996. Her research contributions have been published in prestigious journals such as Cell, Nature, Genes & Development, Neuron, and Journal of Cell Biology.

Projects

With her collaborator, graphic designer Ann Boughton, Tobin has completed the production of three educational multimedia CD-ROM discs about the genetic revolution in medical care sparked by the rapid advances in our knowledge about the human genome. An on-line version derived and updated from these CDs is pending release through Twisted Ladder Media, and is entitled: "The New Genetics: Medicine and the Human Genome. Molecular Concepts, Applications, and Ramifications." In addition, Tobin and Boughton have collaborated on educational websites on inherited risk of breast cancer and on hereditary colorectal cancer with the Stanford Cancer Genetics Clinic.

Tobin's current major research interests include an educational project funded by the National Science Foundation to create and evaluate innovative modules for undergraduates entitled, "The New Genetics: Electronic Tools for Educational Innovation." The modules are presented in on-line form as an electronic course and are accompanied by workbook exercises and problem sets. The content includes principles of genetics, molecular genetic technologies, applications in medicine, environmental biology, agriculture, and society, as well as implications. In addition, she is collaborating on two projects that are exploring the ramifications of using genetic information about addiction risk in the judicial system.

Tobin is a member of the Benchside Consultation Team for the Center for the Integration of Research on Genetics and Ethics, and she evaluates clinical protocols for ethical issues for the Clinical Translational Research Program.