People
Principal Investigators
Dr. Rabinovitch joined Stanford University in the summer of 2002 as the Dwight and Vera Dunlevie Professor of Pediatric Cardiology, and staff scientist at the Vera Moulton Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also Professor (by courtesy) of Developmental Biology. Dr. Rabinovitch is a graduate of McGill University Medical School in 1971, and served on the medical faculty at Harvard, the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and at the University of Toronto where she was the Director of Cardiovascular Research. Dr. Rabinovitch has received recognition in her field with numerous awards, the most recent being the 2008 American Thoracic Society Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishment. She is the recipient of the 2006 American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist Award, and in 2005 she was the The American Heart Association Dickinson Richards Lecturer. Previous awards include the 2004 Canadian Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health (ICRH) Distinguished Lecture and Prize in Cardiovascular Sciences; the 2004 AHA Basic Research Prize; the University of Kentucky Gill Heart Institute Award for Outstanding Contributions to Cardiovascular Research (2003); the AHA Paul Dudley White International Lectureship Award (2002); a Research Achievement Award from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (1994); the Julius Comroe Lectureship from the American Physiological Society (1996), an Endowed Research Chair from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario (1997); the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Award of Merit (1999); the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2000), and the McGill University Cushing Memorial Award in Pediatrics (1971). Dr. Rabinovitch is currently a Member of the NIH/NHLBI Scientific Advisory Council to the Director and the Executive Committee of the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute. Dr. Rabinovitch is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the 4th World Congress of Pulmonary Circulation, and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Pulmonary Hypertension Association, the Pulmonary Circulation Council of the American Thoracic Society, and the Executive Council of the American Pediatric Society, and the She serves on the Advisory Committees of the MPI for Heart and Lung ResearchBoard of the Max Planck Society. Research
Program Members of the Rabinovitch Laboratory:
Dr Bland is a graduate of Phillips Academy Andover (1958), Yale University (BA, 1962) and Boston University School of Medicine (MD, 1966). He completed an internship and residency in Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD (1966-69), followed by a 3-year stint as a US Army staff pediatrician and Chief of Newborn Medicine at Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii (1969-1972). During his military service, Dr Bland did several clinical studies that led to 4 published papers, one of which was a solo-authored paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. He twice received the Ogden C Bruton Award for research on the role of plasma proteins in neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. Dr Bland did a postdoctoral fellowship in lung vascular biology and newborn medicine at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California San Francisco (1973-74), where he became Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in 1975 and advanced to Professor of Pediatrics in 1984. An Established Investigator of the American Heart Association (1979-84), he was appointed to the Senior Staff of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at UCSF in 1982. Dr Bland’s research has focused on lung fluid balance during development and on the pathogenesis and treatment of acute and chronic neonatal lung injury. He did a 1-year research sabbatical at Oxford University (1982-3), where in collaboration with Dr Richard Boyd he discovered that events associated with labor cause an increase in lung epithelial Na+,K+-ATPase activity, which provides the driving force for clearance of liquid from the lungs during and after birth. In 1989, Dr Bland moved from UCSF to the University of Utah School of Medicine, where he was Fields Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Lung Biology until 2002, when he relocated to Stanford University as Professor of Pediatrics in the Cardiopulmonary Research Program and the Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine. Dr Bland received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Boston University School of Medicine (1996) and recently was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Medicine from Uppsala University in Sweden (2004) for his research related to lung fluid balance during development and pulmonary edema in the pathogenesis of newborn lung disease. Research
Program Members of the Bland Laboratory: Research Staff/Rabinovitch Laboratory: Dr. Lingli Wang joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s group in July 2003 as lab manager. Lingli received her M.D. degree from the Fourth Army Medical University in Xi’an, China. She completed her post-doctoral studies in the Stanford’s Department of Pediatrics in 1997. Lingli brings her 10 years of experience in life science research to the group. Her main responsibility is the maintenance and genotyping of the transgenic mouse lines produced and used in the different research projects. Fellows and Students/Rabinovitch Laboratory:
Vinicio
A. de Jesus Perez, M.D. Dr. Vinicio A. de Jesus Perez was born and raised in Puerto Rico where he completed a BS in Biology in 1996 and obtained his MD at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences campus in 2000. He then moved to Boston where he completed a three year residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. After the end of his residency in 2003, he continued subspecialty training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver; it was during this time that Vinicio developed an interest in pulmonary hypertension and decided to pursue a career in basic science research. On July 2004 he transfered to Stanford University where he continues his training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. In January 2005, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Marlene Rabinovitch to pursue his interest in pulmonary hypertension research. Vinicio's current research project focuses on
the role of the wnt signaling pathway
Yu-Mee Kim,
Ph.D. Dr. Yu-Mee Kim graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering (Molecular Toxicology) in 2006. In 2001, she graduated from the Ewha women’s University, Seoul, Korea with degrees of BSc and MSc in Environmental Sciences and Engineering (Environmental Health Science). Dr. Kim was a recipient of a DAAD scholarship (German Academic Exchange Service, 2000), a Society of Toxicology/Inhalation Specialty Section Student Award (2006) and a North Carolina Society of Toxicology Student Award (2006). Currently, Dr. Kim investigating the mechanisms
regulating gamma herpes virus-induced pulmonary hypertension including
the role of T cells, elastin peptide and microRNA in this pathogenesis.
Tero-Pekka Alastalo, M.D., Ph.D. irofumi Sawada, M.D., Ph.D. Edda Spiekerkoetter, M.D. Dr. Edda Spiekerkoetter joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s group for
a secone term in in September 2009. Edda graduated from the University
of Tuebingen, Germany, in 1988 with B.Sc. in Biology. She obtained
her M.D. degree from Freiburg University Medical School 1995, and
completed her Specialty as Internist at Hannover Medical School
in 2002. Edda was a recipient of a Pulmonary Hypertension Association
Postdoctoral Fellowship (2003-2005). Ying-Ju Lai, Ph.D.
Students, Fellows and Research Staff/Bland Laboratory:
Bob Ertsey joined Dr. Bland's group in 2004. He
graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Biochemistry and from UC Santa
Barbara with an M.Sc. in Genetics. From 1983 to 2004 he was a Research
Associate in the Cardiovascular Research Institute at UC San Francisco
where he developed in vitro models of lung maturation and studied
the effects of chemical, mechanical and apoptotic factors on fetal lung
development. More recently, Bob published a study showing that poly(ADP)polymerase-1
[(PARP)-1], previously associated with apoptosis in lung, is maximally
expressed in late gestation, and controls the rate of lung differentiation.
He was the recipient of the Outstanding Performance Award of the Cardiovascular
Research Institute (2000) and University Service Award (2004).
Anne Hililgendorff, MD. Dr. Anne Hilgendorff joined the Rabinovitch/Bland group in May 2008 with a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG). She graduated from the Justus-Liebig University School of Medicine in Giessen, Germany with a degree of Doctor of Medicine, and completed her Residency in Pediatrics at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen and the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. She is currently pursuing a Fellowship in Neonatology at the Center of Perinatal Medicine Grosshadern, Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Dr. Hilgendorff's thesis research investigated the effect of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors on the coagulation system in heart transplant recipients in vitro and in vivo and pursued a study in pediatric heart transplant recipients regarding the indicative effect of adhesion molecule levels in rejection processes and transplant coronary artery disease. During her Residency in Pediatrics and following Fellowship in Neonatology she focused on acute and chronic pulmonary adaptation in the term and preterm newborn infant. Through clinical studies and experimental approaches she investigated the role of surfactant proteins and further members of the innate immune system as well as markers of the inflammatory response in the injured newborn lung. As an investigator of the Giessen Research Center in Infectious Diseases, part of the Human Genome Network, she studied preterm infants suffering from early-onset sepsis and respiratory distress syndrome in genetic association studies and non-hypothesis thriven approaches using micro-array chip technology. Currently, Dr Hilgendorff is investigating changes in gene expression and lung morphology following long-term mechanical ventilation in transgenic and non-transgenic newborn mice.
Dr. Kakoli Parai joined the Bland Lab in January
2008. She graduated with a B.S. degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from
Nagpur University, India and a Ph.D. in Cardiovascular Physiology & Pharmacology
from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada in 2004. During her
first postdoctoral study at Northwestern University she received NIH
postdoctoral grant from NHLBI (2006-2008). She is currently investigating
changes in blood vessel expression following long-term mechanical ventilation
in newborn mice. .
Michelle Fox Michelle joined the Dr Rabinovitch/Bland group
as an Administrative Associate in September 2004. She received a BA in
Biology from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1995. Immediately
after graduating, Michelle entered the Veterinary field as an Assistant
and continued to learn and received her Registered Veterinary Technician
license in 2001. Prior to working at Stanford, she was the head nurse
at Peninsula Equine Medical Center in Menlo Park where her duties included
everything from front office work to running anesthesia on 1000+ lb horses.
She continues to be a part of their surgery team one day a week and also
works one Saturday a month at a small animal hospital in Menlo Park.
Dr. Michal Bental Roof joined Dr Rabinovitch/Bland group as Academic and Research Program Officer in September 2002. Michal holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry (with distinction) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. Degrees in the Life Sciences from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. She received a Weizmann Institute’s Special Distinction Award for M.Sc. students, and was a recipient of a Chaim Weizmann Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Michal has worked in a diversity of fields within biology and basic biomedical research, as well as in chemistry. She brings to the group her experience from her previous position at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was Scientific Development Administrator of the Institute for Medicine and Engineering (IME). In that capacity, she worked with the Director on Institute initiatives and interdisciplinary special projects, including development of strategies to create proposals for unique funding opportunities from public and private sources, and the design and implementation of IME seminars, conferences and symposia to facilitate the integration of medical sciences and engineering.
Sone Recent Alumni Pursuing Research Careers:
Dr. Cristina Alvira joined Dr. Rabinovitch/Dr. Bland's group in 2003. Dr. Alvira graduated from Tufts University School of Medicine with a degree of Doctor of Medicine. She is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. Cristina and recently completed her Residency in Pediatrics at Stanford University, and is currently pursuing a Pediatric Critical Care Fellowship at Stanford University. Dr. Alvira's research focuses on maturational differences in nuclear factor kappa B activation in murine lung in response to systemic lipopolysaccharide. Lucia
M. Mokres, D.V.M., Post-doctoral fellow, Bland Lab, 2006-2008. Nesrine
El-Bizri, Ph.D. , Post-doctoral Fellow, Rabinovitch
Lab, 2000-2007
Laura H. Rubinos, Visiting
Student (Sarnoff Fellowship), Rabinovitch Lab, 2006-2007
Janine
M Bekker-Powers, Ph.D., Post-doctoral fellow, Rabinovitch
lab, 2006-2007
Nirupama
Deshpande , Ph.D., Post-doctoral Fellow, Rabinovitch Lab 2004-2006. Georg
Hansmann, M.D., Post-doctoral
Fellow, Rabinovitch lab, 2004-06 Stefan Schellong, Visiting
Researcher, Rabinovitch Lab,
2005 Roham
Zamanian, M.D., Post-doctoral fellow,
Rabinovitch Group, 2005
Berit Jacobson joined Dr. Bland's group as a research assistant in 2003. Berit graduated in 2002 from The University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Biopsychology and Cognitive Science. Berit investigated changes in gene expression due to prolonged lung stretch in newborn mice, and set up the systems used in the lab for ventilating newborn mice. Eliana
Martinez, M.D., Post-doctoral Fellow, Rabinovitch Lab, 2004-05 Sandra
Merklinger, C.N.S./N.P., M.N., Ph.D. Allan
Lawrie, Ph.D., Post-Doctoral Fellow, Rabinovitch Lab, 2002-2004 Eric
Shinwell, M.D., Visiting Researcher, Bland Lab, summer 2004 Dr. Eric Shinwell is this year's recipient of the Stanford Israeli Visiting Professorship. He is Director of Neonatology at Kaplan Medical Center, Rehovot and the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. He joined Dr. Bland's laboratory in May, 2004. Dr. Shinwell has conducted randomized clinical trials of therapeutic interventions in neonatal lung disease and has recently identified the relationship between postnatal steroid therapy and cerebral palsy. He is currently working on the relationship between various forms of ventilation in a neonatal mouse model on the expression of genes controlling angiogenesis and alveolarization. |
on this page
|
 |
|
Post-doctoral Fellow 
Post-doctoral fellow
Michal
Bental Roof, Ph.D.
Dr.
Nesrine El-Bizri joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s
group in Toronto in 2001, and relocated with her to Stanford in 2002.
Dr. El-Bizri graduated with a B.S. in Biology and M.Sc. in Physiology
from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, and a Ph.D. in Cell
Biology from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada. She won the first
prize Evelyn MacGlowyn Award from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of
Ontario (2001), and is supported by an American Heart Association (Pulmonary
Hypertension Association) Post-doctoral fellowship (2001-2003). Dr.
El-Bizri's research focused on the roles of Mts-1 and the BMP type II
receptor in the pathobiology of pulmonary vascular disease.
Dr. Christophe Guignabert joined Dr. Rabinovitch's
group in 2006, after graduating from the University of Paris XII-Val
de Marne, France. Dr. Guignabert's research focuses on the role the microtubule
associated protein, light chain 3 (LC3) in pulmonary vascular disease.
By interaction
with the adenylate uridylate-rich element (ARE) sequences, LC3 regulates
ARE-mRNAs translation of a wide variety of proteins that regulate cellular
growth, migration, and differentiation. In addition, Christophe studied
transgenic mice with conditional targeted deletion of bone
morphogenetic protein (BMP) receptor type 1A and Peroxisome Proliferation-Activated
Receptor (PPAR)-gamma, to assess the respective roles of these factors
in the pathobiology of pulmonary arterial hypertension.
Laura
Rubinos joined Dr. Rabinovitch's group in August 2006 as a Sarnoff
Cardiovascular Foundation Research Fellow. Laura was awarded the
fellowship so that she could spend a year learning about research
and developing her own project in the basic sciences. Laura's project
focused on the interaction of PPAR-gamma with signaling pathways
in the vasculature, and how its deletion specifically in smooth
muscle cells influences the development of pulmonary hypertension.
Laura used a mouse model do examine these effects and supplemented
this data with in vitro studies from cells harvested from this
model. This experience, coupled with her previous Howard Hughes
Medical Institute Fellowship, has definitely opened up an interest
in research that Laura hopes to continue throughout her career.
From 2000-2004 he has pursued clinical training, with emphasis on Neonatology,
Pediatric Cardiology and Critical Care Medicine, at the Charit é University
Hospital, Berlin, at the German Heart Center and at the Technical University,
both in Munich. Georg performed cardiovascular research in the Department
of Pharmacology in Freiburg (1995-1997), and at the Max Delbrueck Center
for Molecular Medicine in Berlin (2000-2001). His M.D. thesis was rated “summa
cum laude” and awarded him the Fleckenstein Prize for Junior Researchers
in 1999. He is a recipient of an American Heart Association/Pulmonary
Hypertension Association Postdoctoral Fellowship Award (2004-2006), Dr.
Hansmann was awarded the 2006 AHA Cournand & Comroe Young Investigator
Prize in Cardiopulmonary and Critical Care for studies performed while
in the Rabinovitch lab.
