People
Principle Investigator
Associate Professor
co-Director of Stanford Cardiovascular Institute
joewu@stanford.edu
Academic Profile
MIPS Profile
Dr. Wu is co-Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine (Cardiology) and Department of Radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. Wu received his medical degree from the Yale School of Medicine and completed his medicine residency and cardiology fellowship training followed by a PhD (molecular pharmacology) at UCLA. Dr. Wu has received several awards, including the ACC/GE Career Award in Cardiovascular Imaging, Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Career Award in Medical Sciences, Baxter Foundation Faculty Scholar Award, Douglas P. Zipes Distinguished Young Scientist Award, and NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. His research interests include stem cell biology, gene therapy, genomics, and molecular imaging.
Post-doctoral Fellows
Paul Burridge, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
burridge@stanford.edu
MIPS Profile
Paul Burridge received his PhD in human stem cell biology from the University of Nottingham in 2008. Dr. Burridge was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 2008-2011. Dr. Burridge joined the Wu lab in July 2011. His research interests include human induced pluripotent stem cell derivation, cardiac and hematopoietic differentiation of hiPSC, chemically defined media/matrices, direct reprograming, and using hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes for cardiotoxicity analysis.
Jared Churko, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
jchurko@stanford.edu
In 2011, Jared Churko received his Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario, Canada where he studied gap junction biology. Dr. Churko joined the Wu lab in 2012 and he is currently studying human induced pluripotent stem cell derivation, cardiac differentiation, cardiomyocyte properties that change with age, and modeling hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathies.
Post-doctoral Fellow
sdiecke@stanford.edu
MIPS Profile
Sebastian Diecke received his Ph.D 2011 from the Free University of Berlin, Germany where he was working on reprogramming and phosphorylation of the Oct4 transcription factor. He joined the Wu lab in 2012 and he is currently studying human and pig induced pluripotent stem cell derivation, cardiac differentiation and modeling hypertrophic cardiomyopathies.
Post-doctoral fellow
aebert@stanford.edu
Antje Ebert obtained her PhD in Biochemistry at University of Heidelberg, Germany. Her research interests are Adipose-derived iPSCs and non-viral reprogramming; epigenetic and proteomic approaches for elucidating reprogramming mechanisms; iPSC differentiation.
Post-doctoral Fellow
shijunhu@stanford.edu
MIPS Profile
Shi Jun Hu received his PhD at the Northeast Agricultural University in Harbin, China. He is interested in using miRNAs to improve efficiency of iPS generation and investigate their potential for cell therapy. He is also interested in studying non-coding RNA, high-throughput sequencing, stem cells, and Induced pluripotent stem cell.
Post doctoral Fellow
fenglan@stanford.edu
Feng Lan received his BS in Biology from Central University of Nationality in China and his PhD from Peking University in China in Cell Biology. He joined the lab in early 2009. His research interests include the application of induced pluripotent stem cells to study mechanisms of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and as a model for drug and toxicology testing.
Post doctoral Fellow
whlee11@stanford.edu
Won Hee Lee received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering and Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and joined the lab in January 2011. Her research interests include studying effects of radiation on in vitro and in vivo models as well as stem cell and applying molecular imaging techniques in developing genetic therapy.
Post doctoral Fellow
pliang81@stanford.edu
Ping Liang received his Bachelor's Degree of Medicine in China Medical University (2005), and then obtained his Ph.D. degree in Peking University (2010). He was a visiting scholar of Physiology & Membrane Biology in UCDavis during 2008-2009. His research focused on molecular mechanisms of ion channel function. Using a combination of molecular biology, biochemistry, cell imaging and electrophysiology to better understand ion channel structure, biophysical properties and its dynamic rearrangements. He joined the lab in May, 2011. His research interests include IPS induction, differentiation and drug screening using cardiomyocytes from IPS cells.
Sang Ging Ong, MS, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
sangging@stanford.edu
Sang Ging Ong Received Bachelors of Science (Hons) from University Technology of Malaysia in 2006; worked as a research student in Kyoto University, Japan in 2007, received Masters of Research from University of Manchester, UK in 2008, received PhD from University College London, UK in 2011. Research interests included hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) and ischemia-reperfusion biology. Joined Wu's lab in Dec 2011 and will be working on gene therapy and long non-coding RNAs in cardiovascular diseases.
Post-doctoral Fellow
sunning@stanford.edu
MIPS Profile
Ning Sun received his MD at Fudan University. He received his PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Iowa State University. Ning is interested in deriving disease- and patient-specific iPS cells for specific heart disease and developing techniques for directed differentiation of human ESCs and iPSCs to cardiac lineages.
Post-doctoral Fellow
yongming@stanford.edu
Yongming Wang obtained his Doctor of Philosophy at Max-Delbrueck-Center for molecular medicine in 2010. He joined Wu Lab in 2010.
Post-doctoral Fellow
cjhe@stanford.edu
Chunjiang received his Ph.D. in Cell Biology in Wuhan University in China and worked as a postdoc fellow at University of Chicago from 2009-2011. He joined Wu lab at 2012. Chunjiang's work is in bioinformatics, include anlaysis of next-generation sequencing and microarray.
Post-doctoral Fellow
jriegler@stanford.edu
Johannes Riegler received his PhD in Bioengineering from the University College London, UK in 2012. He was working on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging of rodents and magnetic cell targeting. His research interests include the use of molecular imaging methods for the characterization of post-transplantation related cell death in the context of myocardial infarction, assessment of cardiac remodeling and methods for improved cell retention.
Post-doctoral Fellow
nmordwinkin@stanford.edu
Nick Mordwinkin received his Pharm.D. from Nova Southeastern University in 2004, and his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Southern California in 2012. His doctoral dissertation investigated the role of peptides of the renin-angiotensin system in diabetes mellitus-induced cardiac dysfunction. Dr. Mordwinkin joined the Wu lab in June 2012. His research interests include human induced pluripotent stem cell derivation and the use of hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, and hepatocytes for drug discovery, toxicity screening, and pharmacogenomic analysis.
Post-doctoral Fellow
pshukla2@stanford.edu
Praveen Shukla received his Bachelor of Pharmacy at Nagpur University, Nagpur, Masters of Science in Pharmacology & Toxicology at the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education & Research, Mohali, India, and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from North Dakota State University, Fargo, USA. His doctoral research work was aimed at elucidating the effects of melatonin on NO/cGMP/BKCa signaling pathway in coronary arteries. He also worked on hTRPA1 and TRPV4 channel drug discovery program at Neuronal targets and Heart failure discovery performance unit, GlaxoSmithKline R&D, Philadelphia, USA. He joined the Dr. Wu’s research lab in September 2012. He will be mainly working on a research project aimed at the electrophysiological characterization of iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes and their application as an in-vitro screening platform for cardiotoxicity assessment of NCEs and in regenerative medicine.
Mingxia Gu, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
mingxiagu86@gmail.com
Mingxia Gu received her Ph.D. degree of Medicine in Peking University in 2012. She is interested in cardiovascular biology. Her research focuses on IPS induction, differentiation and potential application in cardiovascular diseases.
Research Associates
Research Associate
meihuang@stanford.edu
MIPS Profile
Mei Huang received her PhD in the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She joined the lab in 2006. Her research interests include the development of non-viral gene therapy and hypoxia inducible factor for treatment of ischemic heart disease.
Research Associate
sanchez.freire@gmail.com
Veronica Sanchez Freire received her Bachelors in Molecular biology and biotechnology from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Spain and her PhD (Cellular and Biomedical Sciences) from the Universitaet Bern in Switzerland. She joined the lab in June 2010. Her research interests include the role of microRNAs during cellular reprogramming and cell differentiation and how to use them to enhance iPSCs generation and cell differentiation for a potential application in regenerative medicine.
Research Associate
styeh@stanford.edu
Steve received his MD from National Yang-Ming University (Taiwan) in 1994 and PhD from the Ohio State University in 2010. Before joining the lab in Feb., 2013, he was working as a research scientist in Qtest Labs, Columbus, Ohio, for various in vivo cardiac physiological/ pharmacological experiments in rodents. He has extensive hands-on experience and knowledge in different rodent cardiovascular models (LAD ligation, PO or VO hypertrophy, drug-induced cardiomyopathy, renal HTN) and methodologies for functional assessment (pressure-volume relationships, echocardiography). He is interested in designing and conducting preclinical small animal experiments and utilizing different tools (conductance catheters, ultrasound, and MRI) for functional analysis in the field of cardiac regenerative medicine.
Instructor
Post-doctoral Fellow
ojabilez@stanford.edu
Oscar Abilez received his BS from UT-Austin (Mechanical Engineering), his PhD from Stanford (Bioengineering), and his MD from Cornell. His research interests are aimed at elucidating how various biophysical stimuli regulate cardiovascular development across time and length scales that span several orders of magnitude, using human pluripotent stem cells as a model system.
Clinical Fellows
Instructor
pnguyen@cvmed.stanford.edu
Patricia Nguyen received her Bachelors of Science from the University of California, Irvine and her Doctor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. She completed her internal medicine training at New York Presbyterian Hospital (Columbia) and her cardiology fellowship at Stanford University. She is currently an Instructor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. She is interested in applying molecular imaging techniques to study stem cell biology and in developing novel cellular and genetic therapy.
Molecular Genetic Pathology Fellow
kitch.wilson@gmail.com
Kitch has a BS (Mechanical Engineering) and PhD (Bioengineering) from Stanford, and an MD from Duke. He did his graduate work with Joe Wu and has interests in all aspects of personalized medicine, particularly high-throughput sequencing of the transcriptome/epigenome in iPS cell models of human development, disease, and response to therapy. Kitch is now training in clinical molecular pathology and continues to work and play in Joe's lab.
Graduate Students
Andrew Lee
Medical Student
alee06@gmail.com
MIPS Profile
Andrew Lee received his BS in Molecular Cellular Developmental Biology and East Asian Studies at Yale University. He is a medical student at Stanford University. He is a recipient of a fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research interests include regulation of pluripotency and in vivo molecular imaging.
Arun Sharma
Ph.D. Student
arun.sharma@stanford.edu
MIPS Profile
Arun Sharma received his BS in Cell and Molecular Biology, Chemistry, and Genome Sciences & Policy from Duke University. He is a Biosciences PhD graduate student at Stanford University. Arun's research focuses on the molecular mechanisms driving cardiovascular development, disease, and regeneration. He is also also interested in utilizing induced pluripotent stem cells for the in-vitro modeling of cardiovascular disorders.
Undergraduates
Undergraduate
wendyz@stanford.edu
Wendy Zhang is an undergraduate student at Stanford University. She joined the lab in January 2010. She is interested in learning molecular biology and imaging techniques.
Undergraduate
ramann@stanford.edu
Raman Nelakanti is an undergraduate student at Stanford University majoring in Bioengineering. He has worked in the Wu lab since September 2012 and is interested in the intersection between immunology and stem cell therapy. One of his goals in the lab is to work towards a Bioengineering honors thesis by spring 2014.
Undergraduate
juliaransohoff@gmail.com
Julia Ransohoff graduated from Harvard College in 2012, majoring in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology. She has worked in the Wu lab during the summers since 2008, and full time since May 2012. Her interests include understanding the immunogenicity of pluripotent stem cells and their derivatives, and supporting their engraftment by targeted immunosuppressive and matrix- or small molecule-based pro-survival approaches. She will start medical school in August 2013.
