Soraya Fereydooni

Medical School: Yale
Undergraduate: Stanford
Hobbies: “Beyond dancing tango and lindy hop, I express myself through scientific illustrations and mixed media art that combines calligraphy with drawing and photography. My work has been displayed on both undergraduate and medical school campuses. I also greatly enjoy camping and hiking in national parks.”

Sabrina Maoz, PhD 

Medical School: UCLA 
Undergraduate: UC Berkeley 
Hobbies: “I love to explore the outdoors - from the beach to hiking, keeping active with pilates, and playing with my favorite ingredients when experimenting with new recipes. In my sparse free time, I've loved dancing ballet with my daughter, watching her excitement with one of my favorite art forms.”   

Mark Nyaeme 

Medical School: Carle Illinois College of Medicine 
Undergraduate: University of Wisconsin - Madison  
Hobbies: “I enjoy cooking and baking, in which I create my own fusion recipes and host multi-course dinner parties. I love to meld flavors from the various countries I have traveled to with those of my own culture. I also build my own computers which I 3D model with and enjoy playing strategy team games.” 

Hong-Ho Yang  

Medical School: UCLA
Undergraduate: UCLA
Hobbies: “I'm a passionate musician, proficient in trumpet and percussion, and served as the lead trumpet soloist and pop tune arranger for my high school orchestra. In addition to music, I'm an avid distance runner and was the varsity captain of my high school cross-country team.”

Yasmin Eltawil

Medical School: UCSF
Undergraduate: Stanford
Hobbies: “I enjoy portrait photography. My favorite portraits are those of children, as their joy shines through and remain a timeless memory. I enjoy hiking, traveling, and making jewelry with friends and family. I also enjoy cooking and can make a fantastic chicken shawarma wrap!”

Dr. Kara Meister has been awarded a Human and Planetary Health grant from the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability for her project titled “Estimation of nano/microplastic pollution in humans through high-resolution, high-throughput spectroscopy.” The project aims to address the increasing presence of nano/microplastics (NMPs) in the environment and their potential link to human disease.  The goal is to develop a method for sensitive, high-resolution detection of NMPs in human tissues and fluids that can be performed in large populations. Over 430 million tons of plastic is produced yearly and is projected to continue growing, at about 5% annually. The global burden of NMPs on human and planetary health is unclear, controversial, and markedly challenging to study. Studying the impact of NMPs on humans is a lynchpin to motivating changes in policy and personal decision making.

Dr. Jon-Paul Pepper has been awarded a grant from Stanford Spark for the project titled “Modulators to enhance motor nerve regeneration after injury and repair.” To repair injured nerves, surgeons commonly use collagen nerve wraps and conduits. None of the existing products in clinical use can release therapeutic drugs, which is a missed opportunity to improve outcomes. The laboratory of Jon-Paul Pepper, MD, seeks to change this, and create drug-releasing nerve devices that are similar to cardiac stents being loaded with drugs to improve their clinical performance. The Pepper Lab received funding from Stanford SPARK for their project “Modulators to enhance motor nerve regeneration after injury and repair.” The Pepper Lab, in close collaboration with Mark Skylar-Scott, PhD, from the Department of Bioengineering and Laurent Bekale, PhD, developed methods to deploy neuromodulating drugs at the site of surgical nerve repair. This grant supports their ongoing work during a critical phase of development.

Image credit: Mark Sklyar Scott & Chris Grallap 

Dr. Anthony Ricci has received an R01 grant from NIH for his project, “Determining how the natural hair bundle stimulations shapes the hair cell receptor current.” The hair bundle is the mechanosensitive organelle of the hair cell; how the hair bundle is stimulated dictates the receptor current properties that ultimately determine the sensitivity and frequency selectivity of the system. This project will determine how hair bundles are stimulated in situ, the parameters most relevant to that motion, and how this stimulation impacts the hair cell receptor current. Given that both genetic and environmental insults target the hair bundle and its interface, resulting in hearing loss, quantifying these relationships is critical to our basic understanding of signal processing within the cochlea and as a first step toward developing preventative and restorative care.

Dr. Konstantina Stankovic has received an R01 grant from NIH for her project, “Multimodality Micro-Optical Coherence Tomography for Imaging the Functional Microanatomy of the Human Cochlea.”  In collaboration with Gary Tearney at Massachusetts General Hospital, they aim to develop and validate a new imaging system and minimally invasive probe called dynamic micro-optical coherence tomography (dµOCT).  This type of imaging can detect the structure and the health of individual sensory cells and neurons in the cochlea with very high resolution (right).

Image from Schulz-Hildebrandt H, Spasic S, Hou F, Ting KC, Batts S, Tearney G, Stankovic KM. Dynamic micro-optical coherence tomography enables structural and metabolic imaging of the mammalian cochlea. Front Mol Neurosci. 2024 Oct 10;17:1436837. doi: 10.3389/fnmol.2024.1436837. PMID: 39449964; PMCID: PMC11499234. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39449964/

Dr. Stefan Heller and Dr. Nesrine Benkafadar have received an independent research grant, funded by SpaceX, for their project “Impact of rocket launch noise on avian hearing.”  This project will study the impact of Falcon 9 rocket launch noise on bird hearing, particularly focusing on western snowy plovers. The study uses chickens as a surrogate due to established methods for examining auditory health. It is situated around a rocket launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base and will commence in the summer of 2025, continuing until the summer of 2027. Rocket launches are extremely loud and can result in a total exposure of 5 to 7 minutes of engine noise. Additionally, some launches involve the landing of a reusable rocket stage, which generates a sonic boom, along with extra rocket engine noise during a brief landing engine burn. Western snowy plovers and other wildlife experience launch engine noise and sonic booms. This study aims to evaluate the effects of rocket launch noise exposure on hearing loss in birds located at different distances from the launch site. Chickens will be utilized as a surrogate species due to the established methods for quantitatively assessing hearing thresholds, inner ear sensory hair cell loss, cell regeneration, and hearing threshold recovery. If they discover detrimental effects on auditory performance caused by rocket launch exposure, this data could facilitate the development of targeted strategies to protect wildlife.