Colin Bergstrom, MD
Mentor: Alice Fan, MD
SCIT Fellowship Training: 7/1/2024 - 6/30/2026

Colin Bergstrom is a Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow in Oncology and Hematology. Originally from Oregon. He earned his B.S in Biochemistry from the University of Oregon Honors College (2011), completed his medical degree at Oregon Health and Sciences University (2017) and completed an Internal Medicine residency at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, TX (2020). Post-residency, he was awarded a year-long research training grant funded through Burroughs Welcome Foundation investigating the interplay between the gut microbiota and the processes of metastasis and carcinogenesis through murine models. In his fellowship at Stanford his research has focused on strategies focused on detecting early therapeutic response in order to personalize therapies and mitigate toxicities. As a SCIT fellow, he will work with mentors Drs. Alice Fan and Jeremey Dahl utilizing novel ultrasound technologies for early detection of treatment response to immunotherapy in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma and other Genitourinary Cancers.  Additionally, he will also collaborate with Dr. Iagaru investigating dynamic changes in circulating free RNA in patients undergoing 177Lu-PSMA-617.

Hoda Hashemi, PhD
Mentors: Jeremy Dahl, PhD; Steven Poplack, MD; and Ramasamy Paulmurugan, PhD
SCIT Fellowship Training: 3/1/2024 - 2/28/2026

Hoda S. Hashemi is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Ultrasound Imaging & Instrumentation Laboratory in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University. Her research interests include ultrasound molecular imaging, doppler imaging, elastography and deep learning. She received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, the M.A.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Concordia University, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from The University of British Columbia. She was also an ultrasound research intern in the research and innovation team at DarkVision Technologies Inc. from 2021 to 2023. During her Ph.D. studies, she developed an ultrafast volumetric elastography technique for the non-invasive measurement of tissue elasticity, focusing particularly on diagnosis of liver fibrosis. As a SCIT Fellow, she will work with her mentors to develop signal processing and deep learning frameworks aimed at advancing ultrasound molecular imaging for the early detection of breast cancer.

Farbod Tabesh, PhD
Mentors: Ramasamy Paulmurugan, PhD and Jeremy Dahl, PhD
(2/1/2024 - 1/31/2026)

Farbod is a postdoctoral fellow at Canary Center and Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), Department of Radiology, working on a wide range of research fields, including preparing biocompatible polymeric gene carriers, targeted gene delivery, cancer diagnosis and therapy, ultrasound molecular imaging of endothelial biomarkers, immune checkpoint therapy, and DNA- and RNA-based vaccines. He is also interested in researching environmental issues like water contamination, human health like cancer, and applying renewable sources to replace petroleum-based materials in industrial applications. After completing a B.Sc. in Applied Chemistry and M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry, he earned his Ph.D. in Organic-Polymer Chemistry from Isfahan University of Technology in 2019. He worked on synthesizing magnetic nanostructures and hydrogel nanocomposites based on polysaccharide gums for water pollutant removal applications. As a SCIT fellow, he will use his chemistry knowledge to prepare phospholipid-based nanodroplets to target triple-negative breast cancer and then phase-transfer them into microbubbles for imaging purposes to understand the tumor microenvironment and, eventually, treat the cancer by PD-L1 immunotherapy.