Wu Tsai Neuro welcomes 2025 Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellows
From decoding traumatic brain injury (TBI) to mapping brain-body communication to finding treatments for rare childhood diseases, a new cohort of Stanford graduate students are pushing the boundaries of neuroscience research.
To help with those efforts, the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute welcomes three 2025 Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellows (SIGFs)—Nicholas Manfred, Pengli Wang, and Sarah Jin Zou—whose work exemplifies the institute’s mission to accelerate discovery and deepen our understanding of the brain.
Since 2004, the SIGF program—managed by the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE)—has recognized outstanding doctoral students pursuing ambitious, cross-disciplinary research. This year, Wu Tsai Neuro has selected fellows whose expertise spans neuroscience, chemical engineering, and electrical engineering.
“Compared to other predoctoral fellowships, this one uniquely encourages risk and exploration,” said Nicholas Manfred, a student in Stanford Medicine’s Neurosciences interdepartmental PhD program. “This motivated me to aim high and articulate a dream project that leverages expertise from multiple disciplines.”
That “dream project” is exploring potential treatments for CLN5 Batten disease, a rare but deadly neurodegenerative disease that arises in childhood.
“CLN5 Batten disease is currently incurable and untreatable,” said Manfred, whose research examines how the brain’s lysosomes—cells’ recycling systems—protect against neurodegeneration. In the Batten disease project, he aims to combine methods from cell biology, engineering, and immunology to explore how restoring lysosomal function may guide future therapies for Batten disease and similar conditions.
In her project, Sarah Jin Zou, a PhD candidate in electrical engineering, will focus on traumatic brain injury (TBI) and new tools to study the condition. In particular, Zou is developing multiplexed positron-emission tomography (mPET), a new imaging approach that will be able to detect several different biomarkers of disease at once. “Positron emission tomography (PET) enables us to visualize biological processes in living animals, providing a unique window into the brain. I’m excited to develop new methods that expand the capabilities of PET and apply this technology to uncover mechanisms underlying neurological conditions,” she said.
“Being a SIGF Fellow affiliated with the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute is a dream come true,” Zou added. “This fellowship offers an incredible opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research and to engage with a vibrant community of scientists who will inspire new ways to apply and extend this technology.”
Pengli Wang, a PhD candidate in chemical engineering, is developing a new bioluminescent imaging tool to track how the brain communicates with the body. The approach could reveal how brain-body communication shapes pain, movement, and other physiological processes.
“This fellowship gives me the opportunity to collaborate with both protein engineers and anesthesiologists to develop novel tools for visualizing neurotransmission along the brain–body axis,” said Wang. “The collaborative environment of the Wu Tsai Neuro community inspires me to bridge molecular tool innovation with deeper biological understanding of neuroscience.”
Meet the 2025 Wu Tsai Neuro SIGF trainees
Sarah Jin Zou
PhD Candidate, Electrical Engineering
Mark and Mary Stevens Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow
Primary Advisor: Craig Levin (Radiology)
Co-Advisor: Mykel Kochenderfer (Aeronautics and Astronautics)
Faculty Collaborator: Maheen M Adamson (Neurosurgery)
Signal processing methods to interrogate multiple biomarkers of traumatic brain injury in one mPET imaging session
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) triggers complex changes in the brain that are difficult to measure together, leaving gaps in how the condition is understood. To address this, Zou and her team are developing multiplexed positron-emission tomography (mPET), a technique that combines multiple tracers in a single scan and uses advanced signal-processing algorithms to detect several biomarkers simultaneously. This new technology could provide a more comprehensive view of how injury-related processes interact in the brain and inform studies of other neurological conditions that involve multiple molecular pathways.
Nick Manfred
PhD Candidate, Neurosciences IDP
Pfeiffer Research Foundation Fellow
Primary Advisor: Monther Abu-Remaileh (Chemical Engineering and Genetics)
Co-Advisor: Marius Wernig (Pathology, Chemical and Systems Biology)
Faculty Collaborator: Wah Chiu (Photon Science, Bioengineering, Microbiology and Immunology)
CLN5-supplemented hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for treatment of lysosomal storage diseases
Batten disease is a rare childhood neurodegenerative disorder caused by mutations that impair lysosomes, the cell’s recycling system. One mutation affects the CLN5 gene, disrupting a lipid molecule called bismonoacylglycerophosphate (BMP) that helps lysosomes maintain their structure and function. Manfred and his team are testing whether replacing diseased stem cells with healthy ones capable of producing CLN5—a process called hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation—can restore lysosomal health in disease models. The results could shed light on how lysosomal lipids support brain health and inform new strategies for treating Batten disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
Pengli Wang
PhD Candidate, Chemical Engineering
Mark and Mary Stevens Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow
Primary Advisor: Michael Lin (Bioengineering and Neurobiology)
Co-Advisor: Vivianne Tawfik (Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine)
Revealing brain-body communication by holistic GPCR ligand imaging
Communication between the brain and body relies on molecular messengers that act through G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), cell-surface proteins that translate chemical signals into cellular responses. Wang and his team are developing a new imaging tool, the GPCR ligand bioluminescence indicator (GLiBI), to enable non-invasive, real-time visualization of signaling throughout the body. If successful, the technology could reveal how brain signals regulate pain, autonomic function, and other physiological processes, offering new insight into the molecular dialogue that links brain and body health.
