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

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

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

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

 

Thomas Lozanoski

NSF Graduate Fellow

Research interests: Intrinsically disordered regions and gene regulation, engineering applications with prions
Education: B.S. Biomedical Engineering, Boston University
Favorite saying: “The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” -Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Favorite activities: Hiking, napping, cooking
Dream baymate: Anyone who laughs at my jokes
Email: tlozanos at stanford dot edu

Thomas Silvers

Joint with the Fraser Lab

Center for Evolutionary and Human Genetics Fellow

Research interests: somatic evolution
Education: BS Biochemistry, Davidson College
Favorite saying: “Measure twice, cut once.”
Favorite activities: Concerts, comedy, boardgames, card games
Dream baymate: Sean Clements and Hayes Davenport
Email: tsilvers at stanford dot edu

Andrés Iglesias-Thomé

Stanford Graduate Fellow

Research interests: Prion biochemistry and the evolution of signalling pathways
Education: B.S. Biology, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Favorite saying: “A compass, […] it’ll point you true north from where you’re standing. But it’s got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If, in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what’s the use of knowing true north?” – Tony Kushner
Favorite activities: Soccer, video games and anything history-related
Dream baymate: Craig Ferguson
Email: aithome at stanford dot edu

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

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

Visiting Scholars

Tomasz Zajkowski, PhD

Visiting Scholar affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center

Research interests: Ancient prions and amyloids
Education: BS, University of Warsaw; PhD, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Polish Academia of Sciences
Favorite saying: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
Favorite activities outside the lab: sailing, climbing, surging, drone racing
Dream baymate: Carl Sagan
Email: tomasz at bmsis dot org

Undergraduates and High School Students

Jordan Kimia

Undergraduate Student

Research interests: Role of ER-mitochondria contact sites in proteostasis, biological basis of disease
Education: B.S. Biology, Stanford University 23’
Favorite saying: “Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.” -Victor Frankl
Favorite activities outside the lab: Hiking, reading, playing piano, soccer
Dream Baymate: Mark Twain
Email: jkimia18 at stanford dot edu

Staff

Theresa Lee

Executive Administrator

Education: BA – Journalism Mass Communications, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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