News
May 2025
Congratulations to our newest PhD graduate, Dr. Jonathan Weiss, Skylar-Scott Lab PhD student in the Bioengineering Graduate Program, who successfully defended his thesis titled “Low-Cost, Open-Source, and High-Throughput 3D Printing: A Multi-Cellular Spheroid Approach” on May 30, 2025!
Two BASE PhD students were awarded the Bio-X Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship! Congratulations to Lucy Zhang in the Gifford Lab, who was selected for her work on “Linking Inflammation and Congenital Heart Disease using a Cardioimmune Organoid System”, and to Yi Yi Du in the Skylar-Scott Lab, for his project “Organ-scale Multicellular Continuous Bioprinting”.
March 2025
Dr. Mauro Lago Docampo, postdoc in the Rabinovitch Lab, presented on Loss of TBX4 Alters Smooth Muscle Contractility and Induces Endothelial Dysfunction in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension at the TBX4-Life Scientific conference in San Francisco. This event brings together scientists and clinicians interested in TBX4 related pathways and diseases.
December 2024
Dr. Rosa Ma, Engreitz Lab PhD student in the Genetics Graduate Program, successfully defended her thesis titled “Disease Biology Through The Lens Of Genetic Variation” on December 2, 2024. Congrats to our first BASE Program PhD graduate!!
November 2024
New publication out in Cell from Dr. Xiaojie Qiu and collaborators entitled “Spatiotemporal modeling of molecular holograms”. They developed a “virtual embryo” using computational tools to build a 3D cellular map at single-cell resolution of the developing mouse embryo. Read more about it in the Nature News and Views article here.
October 2024
October 2024 - Newest BASE faculty member Dr. Xiaojie Qiu was selected for the prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator (DP2) Award, which supports unusually innovative research from early career investigators. His project will focus on “Towards Foundational 3D In Silico Models of Whole Mouse Embryogenesis”. Read more about the program and the awardees here. Congrats, Xiaojie!
August 2024
Dr. Casey Gifford was awarded an Additional Ventures/American Heart Association Collaborative Sciences Award. She will collaborate with Anshul Kundaje (Stanford), Elizabeth Crouch (UCSF), and Christina Theodoris (Gladstone Institutes/UCSF) to correct latent mechanisms that underlie neurodevelopmental disorders associated with congenital heart disease. Read more about the program in the press release here.
July 2024
Dr. Casey Gifford received an award for Best Talk Given by a Senior Investigator for her presentation on “Cardiac Organoids Provide a Platform for Complex Genetic Studies of 22q11 Deletion Syndrome” at the International 22q11.2 Scientific Conference in Portugal.
June 2024
Dr. Xiaojie Qiu, Dr. Jesse Engreitz, and Dr. Marlene Rabinovitch received a California Institute of Regenerative Medicine grant for their work on “Mapping and modeling endothelial cell fate decisions for pulmonary arterial hypertension”.
May 2024
Congratulations to Dr. Luca Rosalia, a postdoctoral fellow in the Skylar-Scott Lab, who was awarded the prestigious Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Career Award at the Scientific Interface to support his transition into an independent investigator position. His work will focus on “Bio-Fabrication and Mechanobiology: A Biomimetic Approach to Modeling and Understanding Cardiovascular Diseases”.
February 2024
New publication out in Nature from the Engreitz Lab and collaborators at the Broad Institute/Brigham and Women’s Hospital. This study developed a Variant-to-Gene-to-Program (V2G2P) to map how genetic variants affect gene expression and how genes impact biological function, and used this approach to uncover mechanisms underlying coronary artery disease risk. Read more in the Broad/BWH press release here.
Dr. Casey Gifford was selected as a member of Stanford MCHRI's Inaugural Team Science and Translational Medicine Faculty Development Cohort. She will be leading a project focused on “Identifying gene regulatory networks involved in congenital heart disease amenable to therapeutic intervention”.
January 2024
Two BASE postdocs were awarded the American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship! Congratulations to Dr. Megha Agarwal, postdoc in the Gifford Lab, who was selected for her work on “Understanding left ventricular non-compaction through myocardial-endocardial crosstalk using human cardiac organoid”, and to Dr. Chongyang Zhang, postdoc in the Rabinovitch Lab, studying the “Mechanism underlying pulmonary arterial hypertension induced by reduced SOX17 in congenital heart disease”.