Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance
Showing 251-260 of 381 Results
-
Marily Oppezzo
Senior Research Scholar, Medicine - Med/Stanford Prevention Research Center
BioDr. Oppezzo is an Instructor of Medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and head of the nutrition pillar at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine. She is a behavioral and learning scientist, dietitian, and exercise science interventionist. She earned her PhD in Educational Psychology from Stanford University, and holds a Master’s degree in Nutritional Science, and is board certified Lifestyle Medicine Professional.
Dr. Oppezzo's work combines her extensive training in nutrition, exercise science, and behavioral science to develop innovative interventions that empower individuals to adopt sustainable, healthy habits - integrating them into their already busy lives. With a focus on "minimal dose, maximal gains" she explores the best ways for people to adopt small, actionable changes for significant improvements in health and well-being. She is particularly interested in the impact of "exercise snacks"—short, accessible bouts of physical activity—on productivity, mood, and overall health. One of her key interventions, "Stronger," is designed to provide peri- and post-menopausal women with effective strength training that maximizes benefits while minimizing time commitment. -
Lars Osterberg, MD, MPH
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsBarriers to Humanism
Collaborative Faculty Development in Improving Humanism and Professionalism
Using Radiofrequency Identificaton technology to improve medication adherence
Impact of Learning Communities on Medical Education -
Danielle Mari Panelli
Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Maternal Fetal Medicine and Obstetrics)
BioDr. Danielle Panelli, MD, MS is an Assistant Professor in Maternal–Fetal Medicine in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Stanford University School of Medicine. She completed Ob/Gyn residency training at Harvard (Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Mass General Hospital), and both fellowship training in Maternal–Fetal Medicine and a Masters Degree in Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Stanford.
Dr. Panelli is a clinician–scientist whose work bridges clinical and translational research to understand how stress and mental health shape pregnancy outcomes and postpartum recovery. Her research program focuses on psychobiologic markers of stress—including telomere dynamics and epigenetic aging—to advance precision medicine approaches for perinatal mental illness and pregnancy complications.
Clinically, she cares for routine and high-risk obstetric patients and integrates trauma-informed, evidence-based approaches into care delivery. She is committed to mentorship and education, serves as Director of Research for the Maternal–Fetal Medicine Fellowship, and contributes to national leadership and scholarship in perinatal mental health. -
Sergiu P. Pasca
Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program and Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Hoover Institution
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsA critical challenge in understanding the intricate programs underlying development, assembly and dysfunction of the human brain is the lack of direct access to intact, functioning human brain tissue for detailed investigation by imaging, recording, and stimulation.
To address this, we are developing bottom-up approaches to generate and assemble, from multi-cellular components, human neural circuits in vitro and in vivo.
We introduced the use of instructive signals for deriving from human pluripotent stem cells self-organizing 3D cellular structures named brain region-specific spheroids/organoids. We demonstrated that these cultures, such as the ones resembling the cerebral cortex, can be reliably derived across many lines and experiments, contain synaptically connected neurons and non-reactive astrocytes, and can be used to gain mechanistic insights into genetic and environmental brain disorders. Moreover, when maintained as long-term cultures, they recapitulate an intrinsic program of maturation that progresses towards postnatal stages.
We also pioneered a modular system to integrate 3D brain region-specific organoids and study human neuronal migration and neural circuit formation in functional preparations that we named assembloids. We have actively applied these models in combination with studies in long-term ex vivo brain preparations to acquire a deeper understanding of human physiology, evolution and disease mechanisms.
We have carved a unique research program that combines rigorous in vivo and in vitro neuroscience, stem cell and molecular biology approaches to construct and deconstruct previously inaccessible stages of human brain development and function in health and disease.
We believe science is a community effort, and accordingly, we have been advancing the field by broadly and openly sharing our technologies with numerous laboratories around the world and organizing the primary research conference and the training courses in the area of cellular models of the human brain. -
Michele Lanpher Patel
Instructor, Medicine - Stanford Prevention Research Center
BioMichele ("Shelley") L. Patel, PhD is an Instructor in the Stanford Prevention Research Center at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Trained as a clinical health psychologist, Dr. Patel conducts research to optimize scalable digital health interventions for adults with obesity. She leads clinical trials that test innovative strategies to promote weight loss, dietary quality, physical activity, and engagement in digital health interventions.
Supported by an NIH career development award (K23), Dr. Patel's recent Spark trial investigated the most potent combination of self-monitoring strategies in a behavioral weight loss intervention among 176 adults with overweight or obesity.
Her work leverages the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST) to systematically identify intervention strategies that maximize the effectiveness of a digital health intervention while minimizing patient burden. Recent work has focused on topics like whether to assign easier vs. harder goals and which combination of low-friction dietary strategies enhance success.
Dr. Patel received her PhD in clinical psychology from Duke University. She completed her clinical internship at the VA Palo Alto with a specialization in behavioral medicine, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship (T32) at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. She currently serves as the Past Chair of the Optimization of Behavioral and Biobehavioral Interventions special interest group in the Society of Behavioral Medicine.
Primary Research Interests:
-- Optimizing scalable digital interventions for obesity treatment and prevention
-- Leveraging behavioral science to create lower-burden self-monitoring strategies to improve engagement and outcomes
-- Identifying psychosocial factors (including health literacy and self-efficacy) that influence treatment success
Methodological Expertise:
-- Randomized clinical trials, including factorial designs and embedded trials
-- Systematic reviews
-- Signal detection analysis
*New 2026 paper on goal setting in a digital weight loss intervention: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/osp4.70175 -
Marco Perez
Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)
BioDr. Marco Perez's research goal is to better understand the fundamental causes of cardiovascular disease through the study of genetics and epidemiology. His group studies the genetic variations and environmental exposures that are associated with conditions such as atrial fibrillation and heart failure. He has led the studies of atrial fibrillation in Women's Health Initiative, one of the largest nation-wide population-based cohorts. He is currently conducting a large study monitoring for silent or asymptomatic atrial fibrillation in women from the WHI randomized to exercise intervention, and was co-PI of the Apple Heart Study, a clinical trial that validated the ability of a smartwatch to detect atrial fibrillation. He is now PI of the Clinical Coordinating Center at Stanford for the REACT-AF which is a clinical trial to evaluate efficacy and safety of a "pill-in-the pocket" approach to anticoagulation for AF using a smartwatch. He is interested in understanding the paradox that atrial fibrillation is less common in African Americans and Hispanics, despite a greater burden of risk factors such as hypertension. As director of the Stanford Inherited Arrhythmia Clinic, he evaluates families with rare inherited arrhythmias associated with sudden death such as Long QT and Brugada Syndromes and explores their links with novel genes. He also studies the genetic causes of very early onset atrial fibrillation. He also studies how best to use the electrocardiogram and imaging modalities using Machine Learning techniques to identify patients at risk for cardiovascular disease. Dr. Perez receives funding from the NIH/NHLBI, Apple Inc., Janssen and the Colson Foundation.
-
Suzanne Pfeffer
Emma Pfeiffer Merner Professor of Medical Sciences
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe major focus of our research is to understand the molecular basis of inherited Parkinson's Disease (PD). We focus on the LRRK2 kinase that is inappropriately activated in PD and how it phosphorylates Rab GTPases, blocking the formation of primary cilia in specific regions of the brain. The absence of primary cilia renders cells unable to carry out Hedgehog signaling that is critical for neuroprotective pathways that sustain dopamine neurons.
