Principal Investigators |
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Vivek P. Buch, MD
Dr. Buch is a neurosurgeon with fellowship training in epilepsy, functional, and minimally invasive neurosurgery. He is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery of Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Buch focuses his expertise on the open and minimally invasive treatment of epilepsy, low grade brain tumors, movement and neuropsychiatric disorders, facial and body pain syndromes, and other complex neurological conditions. He uses advanced and innovative techniques to treat both adult and pediatric patients. For each patient, he develops a personalized care plan that is designed to be both comprehensive and compassionate. Dr. Buch has conducted extensive research. His interests include restorative network engineering for intellectual and cognitive disability, personalized network-targeting for deep brain stimulation and MRI guided focused ultrasound, and focused ultrasound-mediated delivery mechanisms for gene, stem cell, and molecular therapies. He also is developing technological innovations such as the use of holographic mixed reality and artificial intelligence for visualization and guidance to improve minimally invasive neurosurgical procedures. He has co-authored articles on his research discoveries in the Annals of Surgery, Frontiers in Neuroscience, Epilepsia, Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, Surgical Innovation, Journal of Neurosurgery, and many other journals. Articles focus on developing novel network control theory applications to human brain functions and new techniques and technologies to enhance neurosurgical effectiveness and patient outcomes. He is a contributor to the journals Surgical Innovation and Brain Sciences. He also has co-authored chapters in the books Neurosurgical Atlas, Operative Techniques in Epilepsy Surgery, Deep Brain Stimulation, and The Encyclopedia of Medical Robotics. Dr. Buch has presented the findings of his research at the national conferences of numerous professional associations. Among them are the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Society for Neuroscience, Congress of Neurological Surgeons, and Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine. Topics include understanding network mechanisms of cognitive control and advances in the use of augmented reality technology to enhance neurosurgical approaches. For his clinical, research, and academic achievements. Dr. Buch has earned many honors. He has won awards from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, American Roentgen Ray Society, Congress of Neurological Surgeons, and National Institutes of Health. Dr. Buch is a member of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Congress of Neurological Surgeons, World Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, American Association of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, and Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. He holds patents on artificial intelligence systems designed to help guide surgery and on neural control signals for behavioral modification therapy. |
Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD
Karl Deisseroth is the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard, his PhD from Stanford, and his MD from Stanford. He also completed postdoctoral training, medical internship, and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and he is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He continues as a practicing psychiatrist at Stanford with specialization in affective disorders and autism-spectrum disease, employing medications along with neural stimulation. Over the last sixteen years, his laboratory created and developed optogenetics, hydrogel-tissue chemistry (beginning with CLARITY), and a broad range of enabling methods. He also has employed his technologies to discover the neural cell types and connections that cause adaptive and maladaptive behaviors, and has disseminated the technologies to thousands of laboratories around the world. Among other honors, Deisseroth was the sole recipient for optogenetics of the 2010 Koetser Prize, the 2010 Nakasone Prize, the 2011 Alden Spencer Prize, the 2013 Richard Lounsbery Prize, the 2014 Dickson Prize in Science, the 2015 Keio Prize, the 2015 Lurie Prize, the 2015 Albany Prize, the 2015 Dickson Prize in Medicine, the 2017 Redelsheimer Prize, the 2017 Fresenius Prize, the 2017 NOMIS Distinguished Scientist Award, the 2018 Eisenberg Prize, the 2018 Kyoto Prize, and the 2020 Heineken Prize in Medicine from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his discoveries, Deisseroth has also received the Perl Prize (2012), the BRAIN prize (2013), the Pasarow Prize (2013), the Breakthrough Prize (2015) the BBVA Award (2016), the Massry Prize (2016) and the Harvey Prize from the Technion/Israel (2017). He was selected a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2013, and was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2010, to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2012, and to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2019. |
Post-docs & Residents
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Anjali Datta, PhD
[email protected] Anjali Datta is pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University. Her area of research is biomedical-imaging, focusing on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Anjali graduated with a BS in electrical and computer engineering with honors, and in the Plan II Honors Program of Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin (UT). She is a Robert H. Dedman Distinguished scholar, the top scholarship in Liberal Arts; and an Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Engineering scholar, the top scholarship in engineering at UT. Anjali’s undergraduate research has been on retinal image processing for a glaucoma diagnosis system using optical coherence tomography in Dr. Markey’s lab. In 2010, she received a Barry M. Goldwater honorable mention. |
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Isaac Kauvar
[email protected] Isaac Kauvar earned a B.S. (Engineering Physics), M.S. (Electrical Engineering) and Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering) from Stanford. During his graduate work, jointly in the labs of Gordon Wetzstein and Karl Deisseroth, he developed tools for recording cortex-wide neural activity in mice, and he applied these tools to discover how circuits throughout the brain of mammals function as a coupled system—and the consequences that can arise when they decouple. As a postdoc, he is working at the interface of AI and neurophysiology in rodents and humans. |
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Aybike Saglam, PhD
[email protected] Aybike Sağlam has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science from the University of Maryland, College Park, an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University. She is interested in functional connectivity and cell to cell communication. She enjoys skydiving, camping, dancing and apocalyptic movies. |
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Jay Park, MBChB
[email protected] I'm a Korean South African and finished my medical degree in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. My research interest is in brain tumours, global neurosurgery, global health, and technology in neurosurgery. |
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David Purger, MD, PhD
[email protected] I was born in the former Yugoslavia and grew up in Washington, DC. I completed my undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and with a concentration in Linguistics. I obtained my MD and PhD through the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Stanford University School of Medicine. For my graduate research, I used optogenetic techniques to study the plasticity of white matter in the mammalian brain. During residency in neurosurgery at Stanford, I worked with Dr. Casey Halpern and Dr. Vivek Buch to develop new neuromodulatory therapeutic techniques for neuropsychiatric disease and to study cognitive network dynamics during consciousness state transitions. I also completed an enfolded fellowship in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery with Dr. Halpern. I am active in high school, undergraduate, and medical student mentorship. Outside of neurosurgery, I enjoy traveling, photography, hiking and backpacking, tennis, music, and learning about wine and spirits. |
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Danny Huang, MD
[email protected] Yuhao (Danny) was born in China and subsequently moved to Canada at the age of 10. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Alberta and completed an honors thesis in Structural Biology. He subsequently attended the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he developed a deep interest in neuroscience, particularly in the area of electrophysiologic and functional research. During medical school, he pursued an additional year of research under the mentorship of Dr. Casey Halpern to examine the neurocircuitry underlying human reward. His interests outside of medicine include cooking, crabbing, hiking, running, strength training and spending time with friends and family. |
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Bina Kakusa, MD
[email protected] Bina was born in Blantyre, Malawi and moved to the DC/Virginia area when he was 11. He graduated from the College of William and Mary with a bachelors in neuroscience and computer science. He then attended medical school at Stanford University where he was awarded funding to complete functional neurosurgery research examining cortical and deep brain electrophysiology underlying reward and impulse control under the mentorship of Dr. Casey Halpern and global neurosurgery research in Uganda under the mentorship of Dr. Gerald Grant. His additional interests include cooking (and eating), traveling (largely to eat), hiking/exploring the outdoors, playing various sports, and dabbling in home DIY projects. |
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Sam Vesuna, MD, PhD
[email protected] Sam earned his Bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering from Yale University in 2012, his Ph.D. in bioengineering from Stanford University in 2020, and his M.D. from the University of California, Irvine in 2022. His graduate work in Karl Deisseroth's lab included studying the neural basis of dissociation (Vesuna et al. Nature 2020). He is a research-track psychiatry resident and specializes in brain-wide, large-scale screens of brain activity, physiology and molecular mechanisms underlying subjective experience in rodents and human. |
Bioengineer
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Brandon Reid, MS
[email protected] Brandon attended the University of Florida, receiving his B.S. and M.S. in Biomedical Engineering before coming to Stanford Health Care at the beginning of 2022. He provides technical support for the autonomic testing lab and deep brain stimulation surgeries for movement disorders. His primary interests are in signal processing methods for evaluating autonomic disorders and the development of closed-loop neuromodulation systems. |
Graduate and Medical Students
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Michelle Hedlund
[email protected] I am a 3rd year PhD student in Electrical Engineering and am co-advised by Prof. Todd Coleman. I earned a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis in 2020. My research interests are in using graph theoretical methods to study dynamic brain networks with intracranial EEG. Outside of lab, I enjoy hiking, reading, crocheting, and volunteering. |
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Tony Liu
[email protected] Tony received his B.S. in Physics from Yale University, and is currently a PhD student in Stanford's Bioengineering department. He has worked on neural computation in small circuits in flies with Dr. Jamie Jeanne, as well as machine learning for closed-loop neural interfaces applied to treatment-resistant depression with Dr. Katherine Scangos and colleagues. He is interested in improving treatments for severe psychiatric conditions, by characterizing brain-wide dynamical systems and precisely modulating their evolution. |
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Benjamin Sherman
[email protected] Ben is an MD/MS student at Drexel University conducting research with the rNET lab. He is from Perkasie PA, and traveled to Washington DC for his undergraduate studies at George Washington University. He initially majored in political science, but discovered a fascination with the mind and brain, assisting in the development of GWU's BS Neuroscience degree. He graduated cum laude among the first class of the Neuroscience program with a minor in psychology. He returned home to Pennsylvania to begin his studies in medical school, further exploring his interest in neurosciences via clinical and translational research involving functional neurosurgery. He studied under Dr. Buch remotely while on rotations and is now on-site at Stanford University to complete his MS thesis. He enjoys swimming, camping, cooking, and spending time with his shiba inu, Doge. |
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Mahad Ahmed
[email protected] My name is Mahad Ahmed, I'm a 4th year MD/PhD student interested in neuroscience. I'm from Seattle, and studied Neuroscience and Classics at the University of Washington. I've spent my time since graduation bolstering my interests in research, and hope to continue during my time as a student. In my free time, I love hanging out with friends, watching anime, listening to music, and keeping up with fashion/the latest sneaker news. |
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Sina Sadeghzadeh
[email protected] Sina was born in Tehran, Iran and raised in Zanjan, Iran. He came out to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University where he obtained his undergraduate degree cum laude in Neuroscience with a secondary in Economics. In college, Sina conducted wet-lab research under the supervision of Dr. Hugo Bellen, worked as a legal intern in Levy Firestone Muse LLP, and served as a research assistant for Drs. Francis Shen, Steven Levitsky, and Jennifer Hochschild. Sina moved to California (by bike!) to begin medical school at Stanford where he is currently pursuing clinical and basic science research opportunities in the neuroscience domain. Outside of medical school, Sina is an avid cyclist, enjoys going on walks, doing yoga, and learning to salsa dance. |
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Chelsea Li
[email protected] I am an MD/PhD student at Stanford pursuing a PhD in Neuroscience, interested in translating systems neuroscience to treatment for psychiatric and movement disorders. I grew up in the northern Virginia/DC area before attending college at the University of Virginia, where I majored in Human Biology and conducted stem cell and neuroscience research. Outside the lab, I enjoy cooking, baking, playing soccer, and going out with friends and family. |
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Fatima Al Rashed
[email protected] Fatima Al Rashed is a medical student at Stanford University School of Medicine. She was born and raised in Iraq and immigrated to the United States in high school. She is passionate about neurosurgery, bioengineering, and healthcare disparities. Her project focuses on laser ablation for refractory epilepsy. During her free time, she enjoys reading, writing, and cooking. |
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Landon Basner
B.Sc. in Microbiology, M.Sc. in Toxicology, current medical student at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Interested in neurological or orthopedic surgery. Well-versed in computational and structural biology. Competent in R and Python programming languages. Lifelong Alaskan. |
Alumni
Collaborators
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Casey Halpern, MD
Dr. Halpern researches human brain circuit mechanisms of mental health disease such as addiction, eating disorders and OCD as well as obesity, and uses his lab's innovations to develop targeted neuromodulatory interventions ranging from transcranial magnetic stimulation and deep bran stimulation to MR-guided focused ultrasound. |
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Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD
Dr. Parvizi completed his medical internship at Mayo Clinic, neurology training at Harvard, and subspecialty training in clinical neurophysiology and epilepsy at UCLA before joining the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford in 2007. Dr. Parvizi directs the Stanford Program for Medication Resistant Epilepsies and specializes in surgical treatments of intractable focal epilepsies. Dr. Parvizi is the principal investigator in the Laboratory of Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, where he leads a team of investigators to study the human brain. http://med.stanford.edu/parvizi-lab.html. |
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Nolan Williams, MD
Dr. Williams is an Associate Professor within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Director of the Stanford Brain Stimulation Lab. Dr. Williams has a broad background in clinical neuroscience and is triple board-certified in general neurology, general psychiatry, as well as behavioral neurology & neuropsychiatry. In addition, he has specific training and clinical expertise in the development of brain stimulation methodologies. Themes of his work include (a) examining the use of spaced learning theory in the application of neurostimulation techniques, (b) development and mechanistic understanding of rapid-acting antidepressants, and (c) identifying objective biomarkers that predict neuromodulation responses in treatment-resistant neuropsychiatric conditions. Dr. Williams' work has resulted in an FDA clearance for the world's first non-invasive, rapid-acting neuromodulation approach for treatment-resistant depression. He has published papers in high-impact peer-reviewed journals including Brain, American Journal of Psychiatry, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Results from his studies have gained widespread attention in journals such as Science and New England Journal of Medicine Journal Watch as well as in the popular press and have been featured in various news sources including Time, Smithsonian, and Newsweek. Dr. Williams received two NARSAD Young Investigator Awards in 2016 and 2018 along with the 2019 Gerald R. Klerman Award. Dr. Williams received the National Institute of Mental Health Biobehavioral Research Award for Innovative New Scientists in 2020. |
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Jennifer McNab, PhD
Dr. McNab is an MRI Physicist focused on the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast mechanisms and acquisition strategies that yield new and/or improved images of the in vivo human brain. Over the past decade, she has developed numerous MRI acquisition methods, with her primary contributions being in the field of diffusion MRI. Dr. McNab has extensive experience with the most cutting-edge MRI technology, including the world's strongest human-MRI gradients (300 mT/m), highly-parallelized phased-array RF coils (64-channels) and ultra-high magnetic field (7T). |
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Russell Poldrack, PhD
I grew up in a small town in Texas and attended Baylor University. After completing my PhD in experimental psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, I spent four years as a postdoc at Stanford. I have held faculty positions at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, UCLA, and the University of Texas. I joined the Stanford faculty in 2014. |
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Bradley Zuchero, PhD
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery, Stanford University School of Medicine. Glia are a frontier of neuroscience, and overwhelming evidence from the last decade shows that they are essential regulators of all aspects of the nervous system. The Zuchero Lab aims to uncover how glial cells regulate neural development and how their dysfunction contributes to diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) and in injuries like stroke. |
