The Speakers
9:01-9:45 AM
Keynote Speaker
Stephen Galli, MD
Professor of Pathology and of Microbiology & Immunology
The Mary Hewitt Loveless, MD Professor in the School of Medicine
Stanford University, Department of Pathology
Galli Lab
In 1999, I became chair of the Department of Pathology (and finished my tenure in that role on April 30, 2016), the Mary Hewitt Loveless, MD Professor, and a professor of pathology and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine. I am also a member of the Executive Committee of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection. From 2009-2016, while chair of pathology, I also was Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine.
I received a BA in biology in 1968 from Harvard College, a BMS in 1970 from Dartmouth Medical School (then a two year school) and the MD in 1973 from Harvard Medical School (HMS), and completed a residency and chief residency in Anatomic Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in 1977. After postdoctoral training with Harold F. Dvorak at MGH, I joined the HMS faculty in 1979 as assistant professor of pathology, became professor of pathology in 1993, and, until moving to Stanford, served as director of the Division of Experimental Pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a member of the HMS Committee on Immunology.
My research focuses on the development and function of mast cells and basophils (major effector cells in allergic disorders) and the development of new animal models for studying the roles of these cells in health and disease. I have particular interests in the roles of these cells in anaphylaxis, food allergies, and asthma, and in the roles of mast cells and IgE in innate and acquired host defense against venoms.
"Figuring out why we have Mast Cells"
In mammals and many other vertebrates, mast cells are widely distributed hematopoietic cells which mature and reside long-term in multiple tissues and are particularly abundant in the skin. In humans, when mast cells are induced to rapidly undergo non-cytolytic "degranulation" (i.e., to exteriorize their cytoplasmic granules and produce both stored and many additional mediators), either directly or because of bearing on their surface IgE antibodies to the triggering stimulus, they can induce profound hypotension and in extreme cases, death. Why do we have such potentially dangerous cells on a hair trigger for extensive degranulation? Over many years, my colleagues and I have proposed one plausible scenario to explain the benefit of such a dangerous form of innate or adaptive immunity: increasing the chance of surviving a first (i.e., innate immunity) or a second (i.e., adaptive immunity) envenomation by certain poisonous snakes, the Gila monster (a poisonous lizard), the honey bee, or two species of potentially lethal scorpions. — Stephen Galli
9:50-10:05 AM
Zachary Walsh, MD, PhD
Special guest speaker and winner of the Galli Prize
Columbia University Vagelos College of
Physicians and Surgeons
Zach completed his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Colgate University and is currently a 6th-year MD/PhD candidate at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He completed his PhD in Benjamin Izar's lab studying the intersection of T cell engineering and human genetics. His work leverages cutting-edge mutagenesis screening platforms in primary human cells to decode the impact of genetic variation on immune cell behavior. He is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Melanoma Research Foundation.
10:30-10:45 AM
Muharrem Yunce, MD
Clinical Associate Professor of Pathology
and Transfusion Medicine
Stanford University, Department of Pathology
Dr. Yunce completed his transfusion medicine fellowship at Stanford and then gained invaluable clinical experience with the Malignant Hematology Group at UCSF for two years. After rejoining Stanford, Dr. Yunce started as the Medical Director of Therapeutic Apheresis. In this role, he works with clinicians from various departments, fellows, residents, and nursing staff to ensure life-saving and emergent procedures such as therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE), red cell exchange, plateletpheresis, and leukapheresis are conducted effectively. Additionally, Dr. Yunce oversees extracorporeal photopheresis for solid organ transplant rejection. Dr. Yunce has been recognized for his contribution to the Department of Pathology as a faculty member in teaching and mentorship.He was selected for Teaching Award in 2023 and Mentor Award by the department and was nominated in 2023 and 2024 for the prestigious Alwin C. Rambar-James B.D. Mark Award for Excellence in Patient Care. As an active member of the American Society of Apheresis, Dr. Yunce chairs the research subcommittee on TPE utilization in solid organ transplant rejection and desensitization protocols as well as he is member of multiple research subcommittees.
10:45-11:00 AM
Edgar G. Engleman, MD
Professor of Pathology and Medicine
(Immunology and Rheumatology)
Director, Stanford Blood Center
Ed Engleman, MD, PhD, is Professor of Pathology and of Medicine Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford. His research aims to discover ways to manipulate the immune system to treat life-threatening diseases. He founded the Stanford Blood Center in and now serves as its Medical Director. Dr. Engleman is also Co-Director of the Immunology and Immunotherapy Program of the Stanford Cancer Institute. Through the application and use of precise analytical tools to investigate the immune system in mice and humans, his research has uncovered disease-promoting immune abnormalities and then targeted them therapeutically. More than 25 years ago, he and his collaborators at Stanford, including staff of the Blood Center, began testing this idea in patients with cancer. His technology provided the basis for the Provenge prostate cancer vaccine, the first immunotherapy for cancer to be approved (in 2010) by the FDA. This vaccine opened the way to a new era in which immunotherapies are increasingly becoming a standard component of cancer treatment.
His subsequent research reprogramming tumor-resident immunosuppressive myeloid cells into immunostimulatory cells that present tumor antigens to host T cells, is now in clinical trials for the treatment of multiple cancers. In addition to cancer, Dr. Engleman studies the role of immune cells in neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic diseases, and organ transplant rejection. His work with Stanford colleagues led to a therapy that targets lymphoid tissues with low doses of radiation to induce alloantigen-specific immune tolerance, enabling transplant recipients to retain their allografts without requiring immunosuppressive drugs. This therapy is now in a multicenter clinical trial for kidney transplantation. Dr. Engleman has supervised more than 150 research trainees, authored 300 scientific articles, and has been an editor of multiple scientific journals. He also teaches a popular course on tumor immunology at Stanford.
11:00-11:15 AM
Christoph Thaiss, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pathology
Stanford University, Department of Pathology
Thaiss Lab and ARC Institute
Christoph A. Thaiss is an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Stanford University. His lab studies how interactions between environment, body, and brain impact physiology and disease over the lifespan. Christoph received his undergraduate training from the University of Bonn, Yale University, ETH Zurich, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Following his Ph.D. studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science, he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Among the recognitions he has received for his work are an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, an NIDDK Catalyst Award, a Pew Biomedical Scholars Award, the Science & SciLifeLab Grand Prize for a Young Scientist, the Agilent Early Career Professor Award, a McKnight Brain Research Foundation Innovator Award, and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award.
11:15-11:30 AM
Birgitt Schuele, MD
Associate Professor of Pathology
Stanford University, Department of Pathology
Schuele Lab
Birgitt Schüle, MD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on medical genetics and stem cell modeling to uncover disease mechanisms and pathways involved in neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease and related disorders. She is dedicated to developing novel therapeutic strategies that contribute to the advancement of precision medicine.
Dr. Schüle obtained her medical training from the Georg-August University Göttingen and Medical University Lübeck, Germany, between 1993 and 2001. She earned her doctoral degree in medicine (Dr. med.) in neurophysiology from the Georg-August University Göttingen in 2001. During her neurology internship from 2001 to 2002 at the Medical University of Lübeck under the guidance of Prof. Christine Klein. Subsequently, she pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in human genetics with Prof. Uta Francke at Stanford University School of Medicine from 2003 to 2005.
From 2005 to 2019, Dr. Schüle demonstrated leadership in spearheading critical clinical research programs and establishing essential biospecimen repositories for neurogenetics, translational stem cell research, and brain donation at the Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center.
Dr. Schüle serves as the Associate Core Leader, Neuropathology, within the Stanford Alzheimer Research Center (ADRC). Her contributions to ADRC include the establishment of Stem Cell Program that supports a human induced pluripotent stem cell and post-mortem leptomeninges tissue bank. These resources are shared with repositories at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), facilitating collaborative research and advancing our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr. Schüle's expertise and dedication in the field of neurodegeneration contribute significantly to the advancement of medical knowledge. She is recognized as a respected member of the scientific community, playing an important role in the pursuit of effective treatments and precision medicine approaches.
11:30-11:45 AM
Jody E. Hooper, MD
Professor of Pathology
Stanford University, Department of Pathology
Director, Autopsy Service & Autopsy Center
Dr. Jody E. Hooper is a Professor of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and the creator of the new Research Autopsy Center at Stanford. She was previously the Director of Autopsy and of the Legacy Gift Rapid Autopsy program at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She has performed nearly 1100 autopsies including over 120 rapid research autopsies. Her research focuses on the use of postmortem tissue in research, including utilizing autopsy tissue in characterizing cancer evolution from genetic and immunologic standpoints. She has published many papers on autopsy and quality and co-edited a book, Autopsy in the 21st Century.
11:45-12:00 PM
Jonathan T.C. Liu, PhD
Professor of Pathology (Biophotonics & Analytics)
Stanford University, Department of Pathology
Director, Molecular Biophotonics and Analytics Lab
Dr. Jonathan Liu is a professor in the department of pathology at Stanford University, where his molecular biophotonics and analytics laboratory develops high-resolution optical-imaging devices and AI-driven computational pipelines for guiding treatment decisions. Dr. Liu received his B.S.E. degree at Princeton and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering at Stanford. He was a postdoc and instructor within the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS) before transitioning to faculty positions at Stony Brook University (2010 – 2014) and the University of Washington in Seattle (2014 – 2025). Dr. Liu is a co-founder and board member of Alpenglow Biosciences Inc., which has commercialized the non-destructive 3D pathology technologies developed in his lab. Dr. Liu’s work is funded by the NCI, NIBIB, NIDDK, DoD, NSF, ARPA-H and various foundations.