Shamloo Lab Members

Nay Lui Saw

I am the lab manager for Shamloo Lab. I graduated from San Francisco State University with B.S. in Biology. After working in U.C.S.F. Department of Anesthesia, I became a part of Stanford community in 2007. My primary responsibility includes running the day-to-day general operations of the lab, as well as, assisting Professor Shamloo and other colleagues in achieving their research goals. My scope of scientific work involves conducting behavioral pharmacology experiment, colony management, and training collaborators. My area of expertise is in phenotyping transgenic rodent model and CNS diseases models such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Beside managing the lab and conducting classical experiments, I’m keenly interested in developing new protocols and behavioral paradigms to tackle current challenges facing the neuroscience community.

Rachel Lam

I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior Sciences at University of California, Davis and shortly joined the Shamloo Lab and SBFNL behavior core. While I didn’t have much laboratory experience out of college, I’ve always been interested in neurodegenerative research. I started working as a research assistant performing and analyzing various in vivo and ex vivo experiments that aim to evaluate the effects of therapeutic drugs on impaired rodents. My responsibilities included performing various surgical procedures, colony management, and wet lab experiments. Through my work and experience at this lab, I’ve developed a passion in scientific research, and a desire to continually expand my knowledge and skill set. I now work as a lab manager to train and supervise other LSRPs in in vivo, in vitro, and ex vivo techniques, as well as procedures that occur in the surgery room. Working with Dr. Shamloo and other colleagues in the lab has helped me to grow as a researcher and as a person willing and wanting to pass on the skills, techniques, and scientific knowledge to future researchers.

Andrew Evans, PhD

Andrew did his undergraduate degree at Bowdoin College, after which he worked as a research assistant in the laboratory of Dr. James L. Goodson at UCSD, examining behavior and neural networks engaged following social encounters in wild-caught finches.  He went on to do a Ph.D with Dr. Christopher A. Lowry at the University of Bristol, UK, where he studied stress-related modulation of serotonergic systems and anxiety behavior, focusing on serotonin metabolism and functional specificity within subregions of the serotonergic midbrain raphe complex. He did his post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky at Stanford, where he developed projects in which he used functional neuroanatomy to begin to understand how a common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, manipulates host behavior, incorporating aspects of neuroimmunology into his neurobiological view. He is currently a Basic Life Science Research Scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Mehrdad Shamloo, in the Stanford School of Medicine, leading projects to further explore interactions between the immune system and the central nervous system in the context of neurodegenerative disorders and cognition and behavior.  Andrew is interested in the role of microglia-neuron communication in neurodegenerative disease and the role of neurotransmitter systems, such as the locus coeruleus noradrenergic system, in regulation of neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration and behavior in the context of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Erwin Defensor, PhD

Erwin is an in vivo pharmacologist with interest in therapeutic approaches for neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, as well as brain injury and addiction. He has academic and industry experience in study/program management and has conducted studies across various therapeutic areas for leading pharmaceutical companies and early-stage biotechs. Erwin holds additional expertise in scientific product and applications for emerging in vivo technologies. He promotes the advancement of automated methods for generating digital biomarkers to accelerate the preclinical discovery pipeline. Erwin received a PhD with concentration in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Hawaii and a BS in Neuroscience from UC Riverside.  He completed postdoctoral fellowship research training in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford School of Medicine. 

Matteo Santoro, PhD

I joined Shamloo’s lab in March 2021 and my area of research focuses on Parkinson’s disease, neuronal vulnerability and identification of therapeutic markers in relation to α-synucleinopathies. Prior to my arrival at Stanford, I held a position as a clinical monitor at Syneos Health. There I have acquired the knowledge needed to translate lab-based findings into clinical and commercial applications. Previously, I held a postdoctoral position for one year at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland, UK) working on amyloid-beta extracts from Alzheimer’s disease patients. During my postdoctoral research, I have designed and optimized a cheap and quick assay for the measurement of toxic amyloid-beta species in human biofluids. In 2017, I obtained my Ph.D. (4-year program) at the University of Aberdeen on Parkinson’s disease (PD), immunology, and behavior. The major findings during my Ph.D. were 1) the characterization of a small protein called HMGB1 as an inflammatory mediator in PD; 2) the motor and non-motor behavioral characterization of three neurotoxin based mouse models of PD, 3) the characterization of toll like receptors in PD and 4) the evaluation of the effects of chronic systemic inflammation on both resident and infiltrating immune cells in the CNS. I also led the Ph.D. student community at the University of Aberdeen as their student representative within the neuroscience division whereby, I established the practice of holding monthly scientific seminars involving the Ph.D. alumni. In 2012 I graduated in chemistry and pharmaceutical technology (5-year program) at the University of Calabria (Italy) during which I undertook an internship at the King’s College London (SGDP Centre) and worked for over a year on a rat model of stroke.

During my free time, I like to practice activities such as cycling, running, fishing, birdwatching, planting trees, snorkeling and sea diving, and hiking. I am terrible at telling jokes and don’t like going to the gym.

Jennifer Lin, PhD

Jennifer Lin is a bioengineer with experience in molecular biology and analytical chemistry. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University. She joined the BFNL team in 2019 and has been managing recent research projects investigating novel treatments for addiction. 

Alam Jahangir, PhD

I am an organic/medicinal chemist by training.  Most of my projects and research is in designing and discovering small molecule-based therapeutics and specifically ailments related central nervous system such as neuropathic pain, neurocognitive impairment, stroke, substance-addiction, and schizophrenia. I have over 25 years of experience in drug discovery. During my MS (Brock University, Canada), I worked on chemical and biochemical transformation of steroids. Later for Ph.D., I joined Prof David MacLean’s group at Mc Master University (Canada) where I designed lateral metalation based new synthetic methodology and demonstrated its utility by synthesizing several alkaloids and compounds of therapeutic interests. I joined Syntex Corporation at Palo as a Post-doctoral fellow where I further advanced both ortho and lateral metalation techniques in the synthesis of complex alkaloids and heterocyclic systems. This convergent methodology since then has received wide acceptance in organic and medicinal chemistry. During my second post-doctoral at University of Tennessee (Knoxville) with Prof David Baker’s group, I worked on carbohydrate based anti-viral compounds.  In 1990, I joined Syntex and continued to work at after its acquisition by Roche. I lead programs mostly related to CNS and neurological diseases. I successfully progressed 3 NCEs to human clinical trials. I have also used my prodrug expertise in improving properties of several lead drug candidates. Since 2011, I am SPARK advisor at Stanford School of Medicine. Since 2014, I am working with Prof Shamloo’s group in the discovery of noble compounds for the treatment of neurocognitive diseases.

Sarah Blumenfeld

Sarah completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Puget Sound in 2022, earning a B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology and a minor in Business. During high school, she was fortunate enough to work in the Fuse Lab at San Francisco State University researching developmental delays and physiological responses to external stressors and tissue damage with my focus on nociception. Continuing onto her undergraduate years, she took part in various research projects regarding neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Age-related Macular Degeneration. At the Shamloo lab, she aims to expand her understanding of neurosurgery and neurobiology while focusing on histology and immunohistochemistry in neurodegenerative diseases.

Emily Chu

I graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 2021 with a degree in Biochemistry and a minor in Mathematics. Prior to working in the Shamloo lab I worked in the Boisvert lab at the University of Puget Sound with the focus on the formation of amide bonds via the use of green chemistry. I grateful for the opportunity to work in the Shamloo lab to learn more about neurosurgery and biology lab techniques. 

Angela Tan

Angela graduated from the University of California, Davis with a B.S in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. During her senior year of college, she was a research assistant in Michelmore Lab, where her primary focus was understanding the molecular genetics of Bremia lactucae, a biotrophic pathogen of lettuce. She worked at Thermo Fisher Scientific as a Lab Technician after graduating. She contributed by performing high-throughput genotyping using the Axiom Technology platform, and processing genomic DNA using both manual and automated workflow. Angela's primary responsibilities here in Shamloo Lab include performing in-vitro techniques (Western Blot, qRT-PCR), and behavioral pharmacology experiments.

Laura Vidano

I graduated from Vassar College with a bachelor's degree in Biochemistry and a minor in Economics of Public Policy. While in college, I explored connections between these areas while developing an interest in the underpinnings, both scientific and social, of good health. As part of that exploration, I worked as a research assistant on projects related to photocurrent generation and intertidal ecology, as a medical scribe in an emergency department, as a microbiology teaching assistant, and as a swim instructor. As a research assistant with SBFNL, I work with the behavioral team and conduct in vitro tissue analysis, such as immunohistochemistry, western blot, and qRT-PCR. I am particularly passionate about our lab's work on neurodegenerative disorders because I have personal, daily experience with the impact of medical advancements. In my case, a surgery developed in 1984 has allowed me to move without pain and explore a new love of distance running instead of needing a cane just to walk. As a member of SBFNL and in my future career, I hope to contribute to work that can have a similarly profound impact for others.

Claire Woods

I graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a B.S. in Neuroscience and a B.A. in Psychology. While at the university, I participated in the neuroscience research lab of Dr. James Ackman, making contributions by performing genotyping PCR assays, brain sectioning, and brain dissections. Upon arriving at Dr. Mehrdad Shamloo’s lab here at Stanford, I have not only continued to improve upon the skills already obtained in previous years, but have also gained experience in brand new assays and techniques and have found a passion for cell culture in particular. One of my main roles here in the Shamloo laboratory is performing in vitro testing of novel pharmacological compounds using a variety of cell culture assays.