VENTURE INTO THE FUTURE
Trends, research and innovation
Sept. 27-28, 2004
James H. Clark
Center
Stanford University School of Medicine
Palo Alto, Calif.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Laurence Baker, PhD, is an associate professor of health research and policy. He received his PhD in economics from Princeton University. He is well known for his studies of the organization and economic performance of the U.S. health-care system. His research focuses on the effects of managed care on the health-care system, the effects of regulation on health-care markets, the determinants and effects of technological change in medicine, the ways the Internet and e-mail influence health-care delivery and outcomes, and physician incomes and career choices.
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John Boothroyd, PhD, is well-known for his research on protozoan parasites and their interaction with human hosts. His laboratory's work has led to the development of several new methods for the diagnosis and treatment of parasitic disease. For the past several years Boothroyd, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, has focused on Toxoplasma gondii, a serious pathogen in the newborn and a major opportunistic infection of AIDS patients. Boothroyd has been a member of Stanford's faculty since 1982.
Kate Bundorf, PhD, MPH, is a health economist interested in health-care financing and delivery. Her research focuses on health insurance markets; more specifically, the factors affecting both individual and purchaser decision-making. She has also studied the impact of insurance on health-care cost, quality and outcomes. She received an MBA and MPH from the University of California-Berkeley and a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She came to Stanford in 2000.
Mildred Cho, PhD, is a senior research scholar and associate director at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. Before coming to Stanford, Cho was an assistant professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Her major areas of interest are the ethical and social impacts of genetic research, genetic testing and gene therapy, and the ways that conflicts of interest affect the conduct of academic biomedical research. Her current research projects include a study of factors affecting patients' and practitioners' use of genetic tests for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, a study of the roles of heredity and race or ethnicity in the stigmatization of genetic conditions, and an analysis of university policies on academic-industry ties.
Mark Davis, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is internationally recognized for identifying the elusive T-cell receptor gene – which regulates the cells that produce disease-fighting proteins – in the 1980s and for making subsequent discoveries about this type of molecule. Davis spent three years as a postdoctoral and staff fellow at the National Institutes of Health before coming to Stanford in 1983.
Carlos Esquivel, MD, PhD, is a professor of surgery and director of the liver transplant program at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. Esquivel is recognized worldwide as an expert and pioneer in pediatric liver transplantation, specifically in transplantation of children under the age of 1. He has introduced novel techniques, such as liver reductions, split-liver transplantation and living-related liver transplantation, to alleviate the challenges of organ shortages. Esquivel developed the liver transplant program at California Pacific Medical Center and served as program director from 1988 until 1995, when he joined Stanford.
C. Garrison Fathman, MD, is a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Clinical Immunology at Stanford. He is well-known for his contributions in the areas of cellular and molecular immunology and immunogenetics. In particular he is acclaimed for establishing antigen-specific T cell cloning, an accomplishment that facilitated a series of subsequent advances in understanding conventional as well as autoimmune responses. Fathman has been a member of the Stanford faculty since 1981.
Linda Giudice, MD, PhD, is chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology. She also serves as director of Women's Health @ Stanford, a multidisciplinary initiative dedicated to promoting wellness and preventing illness in women. Giudice maintains an infertility and reproductive endocrine practice at Stanford and is involved in basic and applied research in reproductive endocrinology. Her ongoing investigations are focused on the use of molecular genetic approaches to treat endometriosis and on the role of the insulin-like growth factor system in human reproduction. Giudice has been a member of the Stanford faculty since 1987.
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Maren Grainger-Monsen, MD, is a senior research scholar and director of the Biomedical Ethics in Film Program at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. Her award-winning films, produced for both medical students and the general public, inspire viewers to experience and question the magnitude of the ethical dilemmas facing health care in our society today. Grainger-Monsen received her MD from the University of Washington; her clinical medical training includes a residency in emergency medicine and a fellowship in palliative care.
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Jaimie Henderson, MD, is an associate professor of neurosurgery. He recently joined Stanford from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, where he worked in the Department of Neurosurgery. Prior to that he was an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Saint Louis University Health Sciences Center. His research interests include computer-assisted image-guided techniques, deep brain stimulation and the electrical stimulation and delivery of therapeutic substances via surgical approaches.
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Judy Illes, PhD, is a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. Illes received her doctorate in hearing and speech sciences from Stanford and worked as a scientist at EEG Systems Laboratory (a San Francisco-based, independent research laboratory) and SAM Technology before joining the faculty here. Her research focuses on issues at the intersection of medical imaging and biomedical ethics, with a particular focus on the new field of neuroethics. Illes serves as director of the biomedical ethics center’s Program in Neuroethics, and she is president-elect of Women in Neurosciences, an international group of more than 1,300 women and men devoted to career development and leadership in the neurosciences.
Seung Kim, PhD, is an associate professor of developmental biology and of genetics. He came to Stanford from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where he was a clinical fellow. His research focuses on the developmental biology of the pancreas; more specifically, the mechanisms that govern growth and differentiation of progenitor or stem cells that generate the different cell types comprising the pancreas. He recently reported using embryonic stem cells to produce insulin to keep diabetic mice alive. A goal of his work is to translate these studies into novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for common pancreatic disease states in humans, particularly diabetes and pancreatic cancer.
Greg Kovacs, MD, PhD, is an associate professor of electrical engineering. He received his PhD and MD from Stanford. His research focuses on biomedical instruments and sensors, miniaturized spaceflight hardware, and biotechnology. He also serves as director of Medical Device Technologies for the Astrobionics Program at the NASA Ames Research Center, and for the Stanford-NASA National Biocomputation Center. He helps direct a variety of projects, such as wearable physiologic monitors, biosensor instruments for detection of chemical and biological warfare agents and space biology applications, and free-flyer experiment payloads.
Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor of anesthesia. He completed his anesthesiology residency and a fellowship in pain management at Stanford before joining the faculty. As one of the core faculty at the Stanford Pain Management Center, he provides care to patients with acute, chronic and cancer pain. His research is aimed at investigating the processing of pain in the brain and spinal cord to better understand its cause and devise better treatments. Specifically, he is focusing on using functional magnetic resonance imaging to "see" where pain is being activated in the central nervous system in normal people and in patients with chronic pain.
Michael McConnell, MD, is an assistant professor of medicine and clinical director of cardiovascular MRI in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. He came to Stanford from Brigham & Women’s Hospital, where he was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. McConnell's research has applied novel MRI techniques to noninvasive coronary artery imaging and both noninvasive and intravascular imaging and characterization of atherosclerotic plaque. At Stanford, he collaborates with MR scientists in electrical engineering, who have pioneered high-speed, high-resolution cardiovascular MRI techniques.
William Mobley, MD, PhD, chair of neurology and neurosciences and director of the new Neurosciences Institute at Stanford, has dedicated his career to improving the understanding of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. Mobley studies how nerve growth factor acts in the brain and whether its actions are altered in sick or dying neurons. His research focuses on two specific neurological disorders – Alzheimer’s disease and Down’s syndrome – but his work is relevant to Parkinson’s disease and other disorders. Mobley received his MD and PhD from Stanford and completed his residency training at Stanford and Johns Hopkins Hospital. He served as director of child neurology at UCSF before coming to Stanford in 1997.
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Julie Parsonnet, MD, is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine and the senior associate dean for medical education. Before arriving at Stanford in 1989 she served in the CDC's Division of Bacterial Diseases. Parsonnet has won awards for both her teaching and research activities, which focus on infectious agents – particularly H. pylori, a bacterium that causes stomach cancer, lymphoma and ulcer disease. Fellow faculty members recently voted her recipient of the 32nd annual Kaiser Family Foundation Award for Outstanding and Innovative Contributions to Medical Education.
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Philip Pizzo, MD, became dean of Stanford’s School of Medicine in 2001. Before arriving at Stanford, he was the physician-in-chief of Children’s Hospital in Boston and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Pizzo devoted much of his distinguished medical career to the diagnosis, management, prevention and treatment of childhood cancers and the infectious complications that occur in children whose immune systems are compromised by cancer and AIDS. Pizzo and his research team pioneered the development of new treatments for children with HIV infection, lengthening and improving the quality of life for children with this disease. Pizzo is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Outstanding Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service.
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Mary Lake Polan, MD, PhD, MPH, is professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology. She was an associate professor at Yale before coming to Stanford in 1990. Her areas of research are reproductive medicine and women’s health care, and her work has provided noteworthy insights into the biochemical mechanisms that control human fertility. She has served on a number of committees at the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Medicine focusing on the future of women’s health issues in this country.
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Thomas Quertermous, MD, professor of medicine and chief of cardiovascular medicine, is internationally recognized for his research on the genetic control of the developing cardiovascular system. He was one of the first scientists to apply the methods of molecular biology to the study of the physiology and pathophysiology of the blood vessel wall. Interests in his laboratory over the past years have extended to encompass embryonic development of the cardiovascular system, and a number of novel genes have been cloned and linked to basic development. Quertermous has been at Stanford since 1997; prior to that he served as director of the Division of Cardiology at Vanderbilt University.
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Larry Recht, MD, is a professor of neurology. He received his MD from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and spent 19 years at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He joined Stanford’s faculty last year.
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Robert Robbins, MD, has directed Stanford's heart, heart-lung and lung transplant program since 1988 and was recently named director of the new Stanford Institute of Cardiovascular Medicine. Prior to coming to Stanford in 1989, he was chief resident in general surgery at the University of Mississippi. His clinical research projects include improving the process of heart transplantation through the genetic manipulation of donor tissue and by developing devices that allow bypass surgeries to be performed through a very small incision. Robbins is also active in basic research, including the use of stem cells and growth factors to repair heart tissue damaged by a heart attack.
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Thomas Robinson, MD, MPH, is an assistant professor of pediatrics and of medicine and director of the Pediatric Weight Control Program at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1993 after doing his postdoctoral training as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar here. For the past 15 years, Robinson has been involved in community-, school- and family-based health behavior change research. His work has focused on nutrition, physical activity and smoking behavior in children and adolescents; the effects of television viewing on health-related behaviors; childhood obesity prevention and treatment and using interactive communication technologies to promote health behavior change.
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Mark Schnitzer, PhD, is an assistant professor of applied physics and of biological sciences. He received his PhD at Princeton. His work focuses on the design and application of micro-optical imaging techniques for studying biophysical dynamics of neurons.
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Krishna Shenoy, PhD, is an assistant professor of electrical engineering and a member of the Stanford Brain Research Institute. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Biology at Caltech before coming to Stanford in 2001. His laboratory investigates the neural basis of sensory-motor integration and coordination using a combination of electrophysiological, behavioral, psychophysical and computational techniques. Shenoy’s work also focuses on the design of a neural prosthetic systems to assist disabled patients.
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Judy Shizuru, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Bone Marrow Transplantation. She received her MD and PhD at Stanford and joined the faculty in 1997. Her research focuses on the cellular and molecular basis of resistance to engraftment of transplanted allogeneic bone marrow cells and on the way in which bone marrow grafts modify immune responses. Aspects of these studies are aimed at solving some of the major problems of bone marrow transplantation, which include graft-vs-host disease and bone marrow engraftment failure. Shizuru has also been involved in studies on the use of stem-cell transplants to treat autoimmune diseases like diabetes and lupus.
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David Spiegel, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, is internationally recognized for his innovative work exploring how the mind interacts with the body and examining the relationship between mental health and physical well-being. His primary focus is on linking various psychotherapies with changes in brain function, emotional adjustment and disease outcome. He has developed a research program over the past two decades that is devoted to understanding how people respond to stress and to helping patients through psychotherapy that addresses psychological and physical needs. Spiegel, who received his MD at Harvard, has been a member of Stanford’s academic faculty since 1975. He now also directs Stanford’s Center for Integrative Medicine.
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Charles Taylor, PhD, is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a Bio-X investigator. He received his PhD from Stanford before joining the faculty. His laboratory work focuses on the quantifying anatomic structure and physiologic response of the human vascular system under normal, diseased and surgically-altered states; implementing methods for improving vascular disease diagnosis, surgical planning and prosthesis design; and creating transferable technology for use by medical professionals and disseminating results to scientific and medical communities. Taylor recently won the Young Investigator in Computational Mechanics Award from the International Association for Computational Mechanics.
Philip Tsao, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. His research interests include molecular mechanisms of atherosclerosis and vascular remodeling, biomechanical modulation of vascular cell function and the role of diabetes in vascular disease. He received his PhD in cardiovascular physiology from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford before joining the faculty.
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Irving Weissman, MD, director of the Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, is one of the world’s pre-eminent stem cell pioneers. He received his MD at Stanford and carried out postdoctoral research at Oxford University before returning to Stanford as a research associate in radiology in 1967. He is now a professor in the Department of Pathology. His research encompasses the developmental biology, self-renewal, homin, and functions of the cells that make up the blood-forming and immune systems; his laboratory was the first to identify and isolate the blood-forming stem cell from mice. His main focus for the past several years has been the purification, biology, transplantation and evolution of stem cells.
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