Our Research Team

Christina Curtis, PhD, MSc

Associate Professor of Medicine and Genetics
Stanford University School of Medicine
Co-Director, Molecular Tumor Board, Stanford Cancer Institute

Christina Curtis, PhD, MSc is an Associate Professor and Endowed Faculty Scholar in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics at Stanford University where she leads the Cancer Computational and Systems Biology group and serves as Co-Director of the Molecular Tumor Board at the Stanford Cancer Institute.Trained in molecular and computational biology, she received her doctorate from the University of Southern California, advised by Simon Tavaré, and holds Masters degrees in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from the University of Southern California and in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. The Curtis laboratory leverages multi-omic data coupled with computational modeling and iterative experimentation in order to define the molecular determinants and dynamics of tumor progression and to identify robust biomarkers. Her research has helped to redefine the molecular map of breast cancer and led to new paradigms in understanding how human tumors progress. Dr. Curtis is the recipient of the awards from the V Foundation for Cancer Research, STOP Cancer, the AACR and is a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2018 she received the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award. Dr. Curtis is the principal investigator on grants from the NIH/NCI, NHGRI, Department of Defense, American Association for Cancer Research, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Susan G. Komen Foundation and Emerson Collective. She serves on the Editorial Boards of Breast Cancer Research, Cancer Discovery, Carcinogenesis: Integrative Biology, Cell Systems, JCO Precision Oncology and the Journal of Computational Biology.

Jennifer Caswell-Jin, MD

Instructor
MD Harvard

Jennifer is an Oncology fellow at Stanford. She did her internal medicine residency training at UCSF and her medical school and undergraduate studies at Harvard. She is interested in using genomic data to uncover germline and somatic determinants of breast cancer traits, including drug resistance vs response and metastasis.

Noah Greenwald

Graduate Student, Cancer Biology (SGF Fellow); jointly advised by Michael Angelo
Noah received his BA in Biophysics from Harvard University. He then worked for two years at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute in the labs of Drs. Rameen Beroukhim and Ian Dunn studying the genomics of brain tumors.

Noah is interested in combining multiplexed imaging techniques with genomics to understand the tumor microenvironment and response to therapy.

Aaron Horning, PhD

Postdoctoral fellow, joint with Prof Mike Snyder
Project manager for HUBMAP/HTAN FAP project

Aaron is interested in studying how normal cells become cancerous. Using multi-omic and single cell approaches, he is studying a hereditary form of colon cancer known as familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP).

Zheng Hu, PhD

Postdoc (Innovative Genomics Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow)
PhD Beijing Institute of Genomics

Zheng is interested in applying population genetics approaches to study mechanisms of tumor evolution.

Kremena Karagyozova

Research technician

Kremena is interested in organoid modeling of cancer.

Kasper Karlsson, PhD

Postdoc
PhD Karolinksa Institute

Kasper is interested in studying tumor dynamics using experimental and computational approaches.

Eran Kotler, PhD

Gruss Lipper Postdoctoral Fellow; Jointly advised by Prof. Anshul Kundaje
PhD 2018, Weizmann Institute (Eran Segal)

Eran is interested in transcriptional regulation and cancer evolution.

Sanavy Lou

Administrative Support

Zhicheng Ma, MD, MS

Senior Research Associate
MD Hunan Medical University;
MS Central South University, China

Zhicheng is interested in characterizing mechanisms of tumor progression and evolution, as well as in technological developments for cancer ‘omic’ profiling and single cell sequencing.

Katherine McNamara

Katherine received an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Princeton University and a master's degree in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge. She is presently an MD/PhD student at Stanford. She is passionate about using computation and data-driven techniques to conduct translational research and is currently interested in using "-omics" data to model cancer metastasis and resistance.

Jose Seoane, PhD

Instructor
PhD University of Coruna, Spain

Jose obtained his PhD in Computer Science at the Universidade da Coruña (Spain). Throughout his doctoral training, he focused on methods development and application for bioinformatics and machine learning approaches. During his postdoctoral training he contributed to the development of machine learning based approaches and applied them to cardiovascular and cancer genetic data. His current interest is in the development of methods to investigate how different layers of (epi)genomic data can be integrated in order to establish a holistic view of the molecular mechanisms underlying cancer initiation and progression.

Scott Shaffer, PhD

Visiting Scientist

PhD, University of California at Berkeley (Chemical Engineering)
BS, Carnegie Mellon University (Chemical Engineering)

Scott develops mathematical models and computer simulations to address several issues in tumor immunology. Most recently, his work has focused on the heterogeneous spatial distribution of neoantigens within tumors, the effects of HLA genotype on the immunogenicity of neoantigens, and the corresponding response to immune checkpoint blockade therapies.

Alexandra Sockell

Graduate Student, Genetics (NSF Fellow); jointly advised with Prof. Polly Fordyce

BA, Vanderbilt University (Molecular and Cellular Biology)

Alex is interested in developing and applying single-cell microfluidics methods to characterize tumor evolution.

Susanne Tilk

Graduate Student, Biology; jointly advised by Dmitri Petrov

Susanne is interested in applying population genetic and evolutionary theory to understand tumor progression and the drivers of this process.

Wenting Yang, PhD

Postdoctoral fellow

Wenting is interested in leveraging organoids models of cancer to study mechanisms of resistance/response

Hang Xu, PhD

Postdoctoral fellow

Hang obtained her PhD in bioinformatics at the University of Nottingham, UK. She then trained as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Francis Crick Institute with Charles Swanton. Hang is interested in studying cancer evolutionary dynamics.