Knight Initiative Funded Researchers

Michelle Odden, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at the Stanford School of Medicine and a Research Scientist at the Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center at the Palo Alto VA Health Care System. Her NIH-funded research program has two major foci. First, she aims to better understand the biologic and physiologic mechanisms that characterize the aging process.

Dr. Montine is the Stanford Medicine Endowed Professor, Chair of Stanford Pathology Department, and member of the National Academy of Medicine. He received his education and medical training at Columbia University, McGill University, and Duke University, and was junior faculty at Vanderbilt University where he was awarded the Thorne Professorship. In 2002, Dr.

Dr. Jonathan Long is an Associate Professor of Pathology and an Institute Scholar of Stanford ChEM-H (Chemistry, Engineering & Medicine for Human Health). His laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms of mammalian energy homeostasis. Dr. Long is the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry, the Breakthrough Sciences Award from the Ono Pharma Foundation, and the NIDDK Catalyst Award. Prior to arriving to Stanford, Dr. Long completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Scripps Research and his postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School.

Scott is an Assistant Professor of Statistics and, by courtesy, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University. He is also an Institute Scholar in the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Stanford AI Lab. His lab works at the intersection of machine learning and computational neuroscience, developing statistical methods to analyze large scale neural data.

Anshul Kundaje is Associate Professor of Genetics and Computer Science at Stanford University. The Kundaje lab develops machine learning models of gene regulation to decipher the genetic and molecular basis of disease. The lab has pioneered deep learning models and interpretation frameworks to decode the functional language encoded in DNA, RNA and proteins. Dr. Kundaje has led computational efforts of large genomics consortia including the ENCODE Project and the Roadmap Epigenomics Project. Dr.

Dr. Jarosz is a Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology and of Developmental Biology at Stanford University. He is also a fellow of ChEM-H and a member of the Stanford Cancer Institute, Stanford Neurosciences Institute, and Bio-X. Dan received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Washington, where he also minored in Physics as part of the Early Entrance Program.

Dr. Jaiswal's lab focuses on understanding the biology of the aging hematopoietic system. As a post-doctoral fellow, he identified a common, pre-malignant state for blood cancers by reanalysis of large sequencing datasets. This condition, termed "clonal hematopoiesis", is characterized by the presence of stem cell clones harboring certain somatic mutations, primarily in genes involved in epigenetic regulation of hematopoiesis. Clonal hematopoiesis is prevalent in the aging population and increases the risk of not only blood cancer, but also cardiovascular disease and overall mortality.