Sarafan ChEM-H
Showing 131-140 of 188 Results
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Elizabeth Ponder
Executive Director, Sarafan ChEM-H
BioElizabeth Ponder is a recognized leader in innovation and translation at the non-profit / for profit interface. Ponder has spent 15+ years building and scaling high-impact research organizations at the intersection of biomedical innovation, global health, and drug development — focused on ensuring the human health impact of transformative scientific discoveries while fostering the next generation of scientists.
As Executive Director of Sarafan ChEM-H, Ponder leads the institute's efforts to drive academic innovation and training at the interface of molecular disciplines. Ponder oversees Sarafan ChEM-H's research, education, and translational programs, guiding initiatives that foster collaboration, innovation, and impact.
With over a decade at Stanford, Ponder has changed the landscape of interdisciplinary molecular research and training. Under her leadership, the institute recruited 19 faculty representing the “scientific maverick” phenotype from diverse fields of molecular research, including 2022 Nobel Prize laureate Carolyn Bertozzi; established an innovative Ph.D. training program (NIH and philanthropy-funded) serving 150+ doctoral trainees since 2015; and designed and opened a 235,000 sq ft interdisciplinary research complex to house the institute. Her responsibilities include oversight of strategy, planning, and operations for the institute.
Most recently, Ponder oversaw the design and implementation of the “Nucleus" as a scalable model for democratizing access to cutting-edge research technologies and expertise and leveraged the Nucleus infrastructure to support a 6-year pilot program for strategic translational investments in new medicines based on Stanford discoveries, the Stanford Innovative Medicines Accelerator. The Nucleus has touched more than 600 research projects in 200+ faculty labs across the Stanford campus contributing to patents, publications, and new grant funding. The translational portfolio included 135+ projects, 8 successful exits to VC-backed biotechnology companies, and 9 clinical trials of experimental therapeutics, including 2 first-in-human trials of experimental therapeutics discovered and developed entirely within Stanford. Ponder also played a critical role in external relationship management for the portfolio, ranging from key philanthropic donors to biopharmaceutical partners and venture capital investors.
Ponder was recognized for leadership excellence at Stanford through selection for Leadership@Stanford (2025 cohort) and the 2023 Marsh O'Neill Award for exceptional support of Stanford's research enterprise.
Before joining Stanford, Ponder led policy, research, and training initiatives at the global health - biopharmaceutical industry interface. She served as Executive Director of the Wheeler Center for Emerging & Neglected Diseases at UC Berkeley where she designed and launched new programs addressing neglected disease research. She also served in roles of increasing responsibility in Scientific Affairs at BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), where she provided scientific leadership to project teams and executive leadership, advancing BVGH's mission to increase innovative biotech participation in drug, vaccine, and diagnostic development for neglected diseases of the developing world.
Ponder completed her Ph.D. and postdoctoral research at Stanford in the department of microbiology and immunology, supported by an NSF National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and Stanford Dean’s postdoctoral fellowship. She published multiple peer-reviewed scientific publications focused on protease function and drug target potential in Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes human malaria. Her early work in infectious diseases inspired her life-long passion for improving human health through scientific innovation. -
Matthew Porteus
Sutardja Chuk Professor of Definitive and Curative Medicine
BioDr. Porteus was raised in California and was a local graduate of Gunn High School before completing A.B. degree in “History and Science” at Harvard University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and wrote an thesis entitled “Safe or Dangerous Chimeras: The recombinant DNA controversy as a conflict between differing socially constructed interpretations of recombinant DNA technology.” He then returned to the area and completed his combined MD, PhD at Stanford Medical School with his PhD focused on understanding the molecular basis of mammalian forebrain development with his PhD thesis entitled “Isolation and Characterization of TES-1/DLX-2: A Novel Homeobox Gene Expressed During Mammalian Forebrain Development.” After completion of his dual degree program, he was an intern and resident in Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and then completed his Pediatric Hematology/Oncology fellowship in the combined Boston Chidlren’s Hospital/Dana Farber Cancer Institute program. For his fellowship and post-doctoral research he worked with Dr. David Baltimore at MIT and CalTech where he began his studies in developing homologous recombination as a strategy to correct disease causing mutations in stem cells as definitive and curative therapy for children with genetic diseases of the blood, particularly sickle cell disease. Following his training with Dr. Baltimore, he took an independent faculty position at UT Southwestern in the Departments of Pediatrics and Biochemistry before again returning to Stanford in 2010 as an Associate Professor. During this time his work has been the first to demonstrate that gene correction could be achieved in human cells at frequencies that were high enough to potentially cure patients and is considered one of the pioneers and founders of the field of genome editing—a field that now encompasses thousands of labs and several new companies throughout the world. His research program continues to focus on developing genome editing by homologous recombination as curative therapy for children with genetic diseases but also has interests in the clonal dynamics of heterogeneous populations and the use of genome editing to better understand diseases that affect children including infant leukemias and genetic diseases that affect the muscle. Clinically, Dr. Porteus attends at the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital where he takes care of pediatric patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
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Stanley Qi
Associate Professor of Bioengineering and, by courtesy, of Biomedical Data Science
BioStanley Qi (publishing as Lei S. Qi) is a pioneer in the field of genome engineering and the architect of the foundational technologies that transitioned CRISPR from a "cutting" tool into a universal platform for Programmable Biology. As the inventor of CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) and CRISPR activation (CRISPRa), Qi established the first methods for the precise, reversible, and targeted regulation of the human genome without altering the DNA sequence.
The Qi Lab integrates scalable genomic perturbation with live-cell and super-resolution imaging and computation-guided design to redefine the boundaries of cellular control. Under Dr. Qi’s leadership, the group has fundamentally expanded the genome engineering toolbox, evolving CRISPR from a single editing tool into a multidimensional platform for the precise control of dynamic and spatial cell states. This work includes establishing foundational technologies and architectures for precise epigenetic editing, multiplexed regulation of the transcriptome, programmable 3D genome organization, and spatial control of RNA logistics. By pioneering real-time visualization of chromatin dynamics and RNA in living cells, the lab provides an unprecedented window into the fundamental "control principles of life."
This principle-driven technology lineage has moved into the clinic, with the lab's compact epigenetic editor currently in first-in-human clinical testing for FSHD muscular dystrophy (NCT06907875). This milestone represents a core mission of the lab: translating foundational engineering into next-generation therapeutics that act predictably as dynamic, complex systems.
Beyond single-cell control, the Qi Lab is building a framework for synthetic cell–cell communication, with a particular emphasis on the bidirectional interplay between immune cells and neurons. The lab’s goal is to move beyond describing molecular parts to discovering fundamental control principles in living systems: how regulatory landscapes create stable states and memory, how spatial genome–RNA organization shapes dynamic responses, and how engineered cell–cell interactions can generate emergent multicellular behaviors.
By integrating computational design with experimental biology, Dr. Qi aims to identify the generalizable rules linking molecular programs to systems-level physiology. He is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator and an Institute Scholar at the Sarafan ChEM-H, and is dedicated to shaping the technical and ethical frameworks that will define the future of human genome engineering. -
Krishna Raghavan
Ph.D. Student in Chemistry, admitted Autumn 2024
BioKrishna is originally from the Detroit area of Michigan, and completed his undergraduate studies in biological chemistry and chemistry at the University of Chicago. He is currently a second-year PhD student concentrating in biophysical chemistry, in the lab of Prof. Bianxiao Cui.
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Jianghong Rao
Professor of Radiology (Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford) and, by courtesy, of Chemistry
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProbe chemistry and nanotechnology for molecular imaging and diagnostics
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Grant M. Rotskoff
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
BioGrant Rotskoff studies the nonequilibrium dynamics of living matter with a particular focus on self-organization from the molecular to the cellular scale. His work involves developing theoretical and computational tools that can probe and predict the properties of physical systems driven away from equilibrium. Recently, he has focused on characterizing and designing physically accurate machine learning techniques for biophysical modeling. Prior to his current position, Grant was a James S. McDonnell Fellow working at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in the Biophysics graduate group supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. His thesis, which was advised by Phillip Geissler and Gavin Crooks, developed theoretical tools for understanding nonequilibrium control of the small, fluctuating systems, such as those encountered in molecular biophysics. He also worked on coarsegrained models of the hydrophobic effect and self-assembly. Grant received an S.B. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago, where he became interested in biophysics as an undergraduate while working on free energy methods for large-scale molecular dynamics simulations.
Research Summary
My research focuses on theoretical and computational approaches to "mesoscale" biophysics. Many of the cellular phenomena that we consider the hallmarks of living systems occur at the scale of hundreds or thousands of proteins. Processes like the self-assembly of organelle-sized structures, the dynamics of cell division, and the transduction of signals from the environment to the machinery of the cell are not macroscopic phenomena—they are the result of a fluctuating, nonequilibrium dynamics. Experimentally probing mesoscale systems remains extremely difficult, though it is continuing to benefit from advances in cryo-electron microscopy and super-resolution imaging, among many other techniques. Predictive and explanatory models that resolve the essential physics at these intermediate scales have the power to both aid and enrich the understanding we are presently deriving from these experimental developments.
Major parts of my research include:
1. Dynamics of mesoscale biophysical assembly and response.— Biophysical processes involve chemical gradients and time-dependent external signals. These inherently nonequilibrium stimuli drive supermolecular organization within the cell. We develop models of active assembly processes and protein-membrane interactions as a foundation for the broad goal of characterizing the properties of nonequilibrium biomaterials.
2. Machine learning and dimensionality reduction for physical models.— Machine learning techniques are rapidly becoming a central statistical tool in all domains of scientific research. We apply machine learning techniques to sampling problems that arise in computational chemistry and develop approaches for systematically coarse-graining physical models. Recently, we have also been exploring reinforcement learning in the context of nonequilibrium control problems.
3. Methods for nonequilibrium simulation, optimization, and control.— We lack well-established theoretical frameworks for describing nonequilibrium states, even seemingly simple situations in which there are chemical or thermal gradients. Additionally, there are limited tools for predicting the response of nonequilibrium systems to external perturbations, even when the perturbations are small. Both of these problems pose key technical challenges for a theory of active biomaterials. We work on optimal control, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, and simulation methodology, with a particular interest in developing techniques for importance sampling configurations from nonequilibrium ensembles.
