Stanford Medicine Orchestra

Sharif Vakili is an internal medicine physician on faculty with Stanford Primary Care and Population Health, a healthcare venture capitalist at Polaris Partners, and a lifelong musician. Sharif's main instrument is viola, but he also loves to play piano, violin, bass, erhu and musical saw. Sharif is an avid improviser and will jam with anyone who brings a beat or a tune, and he was the director of the Johns Hopkins' equivalent of the Stanford Medicine Orchestra when he was a medical student at Johns Hopkins. 

Josephine Wong, Department of Physics, Violin. Josephine is a graduate student in the Department of Physics. She began playing the violin with her middle school orchestra and has started playing again recently with the Stanford Medicine Orchestra. One of her all-time favorite classical pieces is the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin's Prince Igor. She is originally from Southern California.

Wendy Chou is a member of the Medical Center Development team that helps to raise money for the Stanford University School of Medicine and Stanford Health Care and has worked in this role since 2019.  Wendy has played in orchestras since she was in third grade and enjoys being a part of the Stanford Medicine musical community because it’s a lot more fun to play music with other people than to play alone, and it lights the necessary fire to practice her violin regularly.

Dr. Anne Marijn Kramer, MD, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy at Stanford University. She received her medical degree from Amsterdam University in 2013 and during her studies has always continued playing the violin in the Dutch National Student Orchestra. She conducted her PhD studies at University College London and in 2017 she returned to Amsterdam to continue her residency training in Internal Medicine/Hematology. In September 2022 she joined Stanford University with the aim to become an independent translational physician scientist.

Lynn Ngai Gerber, MD

Concertmaster

Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine

Lynn Gerber is a staff anesthesiologist at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and a Clinical Instructor Affiliate at Stanford Health Care. She trained at Stanford for anesthesiology residency and for regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine fellowship. Lynn grew up playing violin around the Bay Area, was associate concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, and was a student of Li Lin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the late Geoff Nuttall from the St. Lawrence String Quartet. She continues to perform with her string quartet consisting of members she has played with for 25 years, and she loves to play for her two young children as well.

Dr. Peyman Shokrollahi received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto in developing an MRI-compatible robot. He is currently a research scientist at the Radiology Department, School of Medicine, Stanford University, developing decision-support systems using artificial intelligence mechanisms for radiologists. He is also a Persian music composer. He performs Persian Hammer Dulcimer (Santour). He had many local and international performances in Canada and US. He also performed concerts with the Persian Toronto National Orchestra under the conducting of Kamal Taravati in 2017 and before starting the pandemic when he moved to Stanford from Toronto. He has also been a Santour performer in Pejvak Ensemble under the conducting of famous Iranian composer, Hassan Yousefzamani from 2004 to 2009.

Christy Kambs,

Violin

Hi, my name is Christi, I am a cardiac nurse on J7, an inpatient unit at Stanford hospital that specializes in advanced heart failure and pulmonary hypertension.  In addition to being a charge nurse, I also work half time as a nurse educator and love teaching peers and new hires about cardiology.  I love being a part of the StanfordMed orchestra, after a 10 year hiatus of not playing, it is wonderful to be making music again and playing with colleagues!  When not at work, I am an avid snowboarder, hiker, traveler and adventure seeker!

Ghazal Jawed

French horn

 Ghazal Jawed is a Clinical Research Coordinator Associate for Sarcoma Oncology in the Stanford Cancer Institute-Clinical Trials Office (SCI-CTO). She grew up in Kentucky and moved to California with her cat in July 2020. She has played French horn through high school and college. She was happy that the opportunity to create music with a wonderful group came up again. Her current goal is to attend medical school, so she is pursuing a post-baccalaureate certificate while working full time.

Ann M. Jona

cello

Ann’s association with Stanford goes back to the early 2000s. At times, she was enrolled in Continuing Education classes. Other times, in a more professional capacity and employed by Silicon Valley medical device companies, she collaborated in Stanford clinical studies. She currently volunteers at the Stanford Cactus Garden.

Ann started playing the cello at age 10 in her native Hungary, which evolved into a lifetime passion for music. She was a co-founder of the Palo Alto Philharmonic Orchestra and has been involved since its inception 30+ years ago, not only as a musician but also in an organizational capacity. Her other interests include gardening and learning Italian.

Maria Yuin is a community member and plays the bassoon in the Stanford Medicine Orchestra. Maria's musical training started at a young age where she played the piano. Somewhere along the way, she found her true calling and switched to bassoon. She has a B.A. in Music Performance from University of Maryland, College Park. Since moving to California in 1998, Maria has played with many local orchestras and chamber groups, both as an ensemble player as well as a soloist.

Griff Derryberry

Griff is an alum with a BSEE ’85 and an MSEE ’86. He plays viola under Maestro Yan in several groups, and takes lessons from Joseph Christianson of Quartet San Francisco. His LinkedIn profile is: https://www.linkedin.com/in/griffdb/