People

Principal Investigator

Dan Jarosz, PhD

Research interests: Protein conformational switches in evolution, disease, and development; molecular mechanisms driving robustness in complex cellular systems; chemical biology, cell signaling, and quantitative genetics
Education: BS, University of Washington; PhD, MIT; Postdoctoral, Whitehead Institute
Favorite saying: ‘Trust your data. They never lie to you” – Gail Ferguson
Favorite activities outside the lab: Hiking, Kayaking
Dream baymate: Stephen Colbert
Email: jarosz at stanford dot edu
CV | Bio

Postdoctoral Fellows

Christopher Jakobson, PhD

NIH Postdoctoral Fellow

Research interests: Engineering the spatial organization of protein ensembles
Education: BS, Cornell; PhD, UC Berkeley
Favorite saying: “You get what you select for”
Favorite activities outside the lab: Running, cooking, watching the Warriors
Dream baymate: Dickson Despommier
Email: cjakobso at stanford dot edu

Lucy Xie, PhD

Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow

Research interests: Aging and genetic architecture of neurodegenerative diseases, stress and prions
Education: BS, University of Toronto; PhD, University of Toronto
Favorite saying: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude”
Favorite activities outside the lab: cycling, cooking, dancing, and sleeping
Dream baymate: Baby Groot or Jessica Jones
Email: lucyxie at stanford dot edu

José Aguilar Rodríguez, PhD

Joint with the Petrov Lab

EMBO and SNF Postdoctoral Fellow

Research interests: Empirical genotype-phenotype maps and fitness landscapes; evolutionary systems biology; microbial experimental evolution
Education: BS, University of Valencia; PhD, University of Zurich
Favorite saying: “I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” — Herman Melville in Moby-Dick
Favorite activities outside the lab: Reading, Hiking, Traveling, Classics
Dream baymate: Aristotle
Email: jose.aguilar at stanford dot edu

Sandro Meier, PhD

Research interests: The effects of prions in the microbiome on host organisms
Education: BS: University of Zürich, MS: ETH Zürich, PhD: ETH Zürich/Paul Scherrer Institut
Favorite saying: “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
Favorite activities outside the lab: Exploring nature by foot, snowshoes or mountain bike
Dream baymate: Slavoj Žižek
Email: sandro dot meier at stanford dot edu

Shady Saad, PhD

Joint with the Wysocka Lab

Human Frontiers and SNF Postdoctoral Fellow

Research interests: Protein aggregation in health and disease
Education: BPharm, Cairo University; MS, German University in Cairo; PhD, ETH Zurich
Favorite saying: “If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to do a better experiment” – Ernest Rutherford
Favorite activities outside the lab: Traveling, hiking, exploring new good food and cooking
Dream baymate: Mendel
Email: shadys at stanford dot edu

Wouter Huiting, PhD

Research interests: Protein conformational changes at the intersection of proteome adaptation and destabilization
Education: BS, MS (2x) from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Favorite saying: “God does not play dice with the universe” -Einstein
Favorite activities outside the lab: sports, hiking, cooking, traveling, birding
Dream baymate: Johan Cruijff
Email: whuiting at stanford dot edu

Graduate Students

 

Alex van Elgort

NSF Graduate Fellow

Research interests: Meta-stable states in evolution, disease, and development. Mechanisms governing genome stability and cancer transformation.
Education: BS, University of California, Davis
Favorite saying: “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void but out of chaos” -Mary Shelley
Favorite activities: Spending time with my dogs, watching trashy TV, and looking at the stars
Dream baymate: Dan Harmon
Email: acvanelg at stanford dot edu

Isabel

Isabel Larus

Research interests: Biochemistry of protein self-assembly in health and disease. How protein strain variation underlies distinct phenotypes.
Education: BS, University of Minnesota
Favorite saying: “If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas.” – Linus Pauling
Favorite activities: hiking, reading, playing tennis, cooking
Dream baymate: Nathan Fielder
Email: isalarus at stanford dot edu

Sifei Yin

Stanford Graduate Fellow; Joint with the Ting Lab

Research interests: Mitochondria and ER in proteostasis, mitochondria genetics.
Education: BS, MS University of Cambridge
Favorite saying: “A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein
Favorite activities: “Encouraging” people to make funny pose for photos, reading crime fiction, cooking
Dream baymate: Stanley Lieber
Email: sifeiyin at stanford dot edu

Theo Yang

Stanford Graduate Fellow

Research interests: Protein aggregation, modelling colloidal gels
Education: BS, Caltech
Favorite saying: “Theory and practice are the same in theory but not in practice”
Favorite activities: Playing Soccer, Reading sci-fi
Dream baymate: Ursula K. Le Guin
Email: tsyang at stanford dot edu

Staff

Theresa Lee

Executive Administrator

Education: BA – Journalism Mass Communications, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, currently working toward an MBA
Favorite saying: “Survival is the ability to swim in strange water” -Frank Herbert
Favorite activities outside the lab: Reading, exploring, hiking, running, spending time with friends
Email: talee13 at stanford dot edu