Research Training in Myocardial Biology at Stanford (TIMBS)

A National Institute of Health (NIH) Training Program

Program Overview

The Multi-Disciplinary Research Training Program in Myocardial Biology @ Stanford (TIMBS) is funded by the National Institutes of Health to bring together post-doctoral fellows and faculty in complementary disciplines – bioengineering, tissue engineering, congenital heart disease, stem cells and regenerative medicine, genetics and genome science, disease modeling, pharmacology and drug development, electromechanical coupling and sarcomere structure/function, protein misfolding and proteostatic stress, and clinical translation. Myocardial biologists at Stanford are found in diverse schools and departments within the wider Stanford community, providing an outstanding vehicle for multidisciplinary training.

The Program will train 6 post-doctoral fellows from MD and PhD backgrounds each year for periods ranging from one to three years, combining myocardial biology research with a structured educational program. Our 32 faculty mentors come from the School of Medicine, including Cardiovascular Medicine, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Pediatric Cardiology, Chemical & Systems Biology, and Genetics, and from the Stanford University Departments of Biology, Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering.

Program Design & Requirements

The TIMBS educational program emphasizes:

a mentored research experience in translational myocardial biology
to provide rigorous training in the scientific method
to refine the trainees ability for logical reasoning and independent thinking
to develop skill in oral and written communication
to provide the trainee with junior and senior role models
to expose the trainee to a wide range of ideas and techniques in myocardial biology
to expose the trainee to clinical problems in heart failure and cardiomyopathy
to instruct trainees in the responsible conduct of research
to provide career development support and advice

Curriculum includes:

Introductory Curriculum
Frontiers in Cardiovascular Science Seminar Series (Tuesdays at 12pm)
Didactic learning
- Seminars in Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Sciences (MED 223)
Visiting Researcher Program
Courses and Meetings
- attend one national meeting (e.g. ACC or AHA)
- attend one specialist meeting (e.g. Cold Spring Harbor, Keystone)

Application Instructions

If you are interested in applying for a two to three-year research training program, please:

Check to make sure you meet the following eligibility requirements (as per NIH policy) listed below:
1. Trainee must be a US citizen or permanent resident
2. Trainee must not have already received more than 2 years of post-doctoral funding from NIH training grants (e.g., T32, NRSA) in order to be eligible for this award
3. Both PhD and MD postdocs are encouraged to apply
Fill out the application form. (PDF, DOC)
Email the following supplemental documents to Terra Coakley:
1. Statement of professional and investigative interests (limit to 1 paragraph)
2. Copy of current CV and bibliography
3. Research in progress: Please include a brief (limit to 1 page or less) description of your current research.
4. Research plan (1 page): will be required for consideration, but not required at the time of application.
5. 2 letters of recommendation (reference form) (word doc)
6. A small photograph (JPG, GIF or PNG)

Questions please contact:

Terra Coakley, Training Grant Program Administrator

(650) 723-9509

Program Outline

Program Administration

Mark Mercola, PhD Program Director

Dr. Mark Mercola is Professor of Medicine and Professor in the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. He completed postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, was on the faculty in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School for 12 years, and later at the Sanford-Burnham-Prebys Institute and Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego before relocating to Stanford in 2015.

Euan Ashley, MRCP, DPhil Program Co-Director

Dr. Euan Ashley is the Roger and Joelle Burnell Professor of Genomics and Precision Health, Arthur L. Bloomfield Professor of Medicine and Professor of Genetics, of Biomedical Data Science and, by courtesy, of Pathology at Stanford University. He is also the Associate Dean of Precision Health and Director of the Stanford Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease and Stanford Clinical Genomics Service. His group studies the molecular genetics of heart muscle disease using both computational and wet bench approaches. In 2009, he was awarded an NIH Director’s New Innovator award to study nanoscale approaches to allele silencing in cardiomyopathy syndromes. In 2010, he led the bicoastal, Stanford-Harvard collaborative team that carried out the first clinical interpretation of a whole human genome, that of his colleague Stanford Professor Stephen Quake. The team extended the approach in 2011 to a family of four and now routinely applies genome sequencing to the diagnosis of patients at Stanford hospital where Dr Ashley directs the Clinical Genome Service and the Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease. In 2014, Dr Ashley became co-chair of the steering committee of the NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Network. In 2013, Dr Ashley was recognized by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for his contributions to Personalized Medicine. He is recipient of the National Innovation Award from the American Heart Association as well as an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. He works with many Silicon Valley companies and investors. He is Principal Investigator of the MyHeart Counts cardiovascular health study, launched in collaboration with Apple in 2015. In 2016, he was part of the winning team of the $75m One Brave Idea competition funded by Google, the AHA and Astra Zeneca.

Daniel Bernstein, MD Program Co-Director

Dr. Daniel Bernstein, Alfred Woodley Salter and Mabel Smith Salter Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Dean for Curriculum and Scholarship at the Stanford School of Medicine has been on the Faculty at Stanford since 1986. In addition to his Pediatric Cardiology training at UCSF, he completed a Fellowship in Medical Education at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1983. Dr. Bernstein served as Chief of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology from 1993 to 2011. His lab, funded by the NIH and AHA for over three decades, focuses on the cellular and molecular basis of cardiomyopathies with a specific focus on those prevalent in children. Together with Drs. Brian Kobilka and Greg Barsh, they achieved several of the first gene knockouts in the mid-1990s, and used these to characterize the role of G protein-coupled receptors in both normal and abnormal cardiac biology. He has also developed models of right ventricular failure unique to patients with congenital heart disease. Dr. Bernstein’s more recent work utilizes human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes to model drug cardiotoxicity and to understand the mechanisms by which myosin mutations lead to cardiomyopathies. Dr. Bernstein has also been at the forefront of translational research in pediatric heart failure and transplantation since the infancy of both fields. He established Stanford’s first heart transplant clinic for children in 1986 and published the first description of cardiomyocyte growth in the transplanted heart, as well some of the first studies of post-transplant lymphoma (PTLD), and transplantation for congenital heart disease. Dr. Bernstein continues to search for innovative approaches to improve outcomes in pediatric transplantation, ranging from the use of cell-free DNA to detect allograft rejection to studies to validate biomarkers (EBV mutations and B and T cell receptor high throughput sequencing) predictive of PTLD risk in children. He has published over 230 peer reviewed articles and has served on several journal review boards and NIH and AHA research committees and study sections.

Terra Coakley, BS, MAT Program Administrator

Terra Coakley graduated from San Francisco State University in 1998 with a BS in Cellular and Molecular Biology and in 2000 with a BA in Developmental Psychology. She also holds her MS-CLAD teaching credential and a MAT (Masters in Teaching) from Notre Dame de Namur University. Terra came to Stanford in 2008 having been in research at University of California, San Francisco for many years.

Terra has been the Program Manager for the Stanford Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease since 2010. In addition to the Training in Myocardial Biology at Stanford (TIMBS) Program she manages two other large National Institutes of Health consortium programs at Stanford, Stanford MoTrPAC Bioinformatics Core and Stanford Center for Undiagnosed Diseases. Terra also holds the position of Communication and Events Manager in Cardiovascular Medicine.

Mentors and Co-Mentors

Kevin Alexander, MD

Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Wah Chiu, PhD

Wallenberg-Bienenstock Professor and Professor of Bioengineering and of Microbiology and Immunology

William Fearon, MD

Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Michael S. Kapiloff, MD, PhD

Reinhard Family Professor, Professor (Research) of Ophthalmology

Kiran Kaur Khush, MD, MAS

Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

John Macarthur, MD

Assistant Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery (Adult Cardiac Surgery)

Daria Mochly-Rosen, PhD

George D. Smith Professor of Translational Medicine

Marco Perez, MD

Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Sushma Reddy, MD

Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Cardiology)

Matthew Wheeler, MD

Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Joseph Wu, MD, PhD

Director, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor and Professor of Radiology

Euan Ashley, MRCP, PhD

Roger and Joelle Burnell Professor of Genomics, Arthur L. Bloomfield Prof of Med and Prof of Genetics

Alexander Dunn, PhD

Professor of Chemical Engineering

Casey Gifford, PhD

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (Cardiology) and of Genetics

Ioannis Karakikes, MD

Associate Professor (Research) of Cardiothoracic Surgery

Joshua Knowles, MD, PhD

Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Alison Marsden, PhD

Douglass M. and Nola Leishman Professor of Cardiovascular Diseases

Sanjiv Narayan, MD, PhD

Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Thomas Quertermous, MD

William G. Irwin Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine

Fatima Rodriguez, MD, MPH

Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Ronald Witteles, MD

Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Sean Wu, MD, PhD, FACC

Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Daniel Bernstein, MD

Alfred Woodley Salter and Mabel G. Salter Endowed Professor of Pediatrics

Jesse Engreitz, PhD

Assistant Professor of Genetics

Nathanael Gray, PhD

Krishnan-Shah Family Professor

Masataka Kawana, MD

Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Eldrin Lewis, MD, MPH

Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor

Mark Mercola, PhD

Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular)

Victoria N. Parikh, MD

Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Kristy Red-Horse, PhD

Professor Of Biology

Mark Skylar-Scott, PhD

Assistant Professor of Bioengineering

Joseph Woo, MD

Norman E. Shumway Professor, Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery

Current Fellows

Marina Gabriel

Research project: Culturing Viable Cardiac Tissue Derived from Human Patients for Applications in Gene Therapy

Mentor: Euan Ashley, MD, PhD

Samuel Montalvo, PhD

Research project: Multi-omic cardiovascular responses to Endurance Exercise (MoTrPAC)

Mentor: Matthew Wheeler, MD, PhD

Edward Guzman, PhD

Research project: Non-viral nucleic acid delivery to cardiomyocytes

Mentor: Euan Ashley, MD, PhD

Matthew Neu, MD, PhD

Research project: Rapid gene editing in vivo for severe genetic disorders

Mentor: Euan Ashley, MD, PhD

Jason Liu, PhD

Research project: Generative modeling of intrinsically disordered proteins in myocardial signal regulation

Mentor: Alexander Dunn, PhD

Vi Nguyen, PhD

Research project: Investigating Cdc14a - Kmt5a signaling in regulation concentric vs eccentric cardiac remodeling

Mentor: Michael Kapiloff, PhD