From protein mechanisms to targeted therapeutics

How are nutrients recognized by their protein sensors? How is their transport across cellular and intracellular membranes regulated? And, how is nutrient sensing integrated with other chemical signals, such as hormones, to determine cellular decisions, especially the decision: to grow or not to grow?

We are a team of highly driven and dedicated scientists, working at the interface of biology and chemistry to answer these fundamental questions at the level of atoms and single molecules. We use a full range of approaches from structural biology, chemical biology, cell biology, biophysics, and biochemistry — to discover new basic knowledge, and contribute to the development of therapeutics for devastating diseases of growth, including cancer and tuberous sclerosis.

Our lab is an integral part of the Stanford Cancer Institute, the Department of Structural Biology, and the Department of Chemical and Systems Biology.

We are always on the lookout for new Post-docs and PhD students — if you share our passion and commitment to fight cancer, please get in touch!

GATOR2 structure with highlighted nutrient-sensing features

Structure of the nutrient-sensing hub GATOR2.

Valenstein and Rogala et al. Nature 607(7919):610-616. 2022 July 13.

Structural basis for the docking of mTORC1 on the lysosomal surface.

Rogala et al. Science 366(6464):468-475. 2019 October 25.

News

August 10, 2023

Karen’s mTOR structure review is out! [COSTBI]

We are celebrating the first review paper from our one and only — Karen Linde-Garelli — in Current Opinion in Structural Biology.

Karen is a Stanford Cancer Biology PhD student in the Rogala Lab, where she is studying nutrient sensing and trafficking on the lysosomal surface.

Karen and Kacper wrote a review that talks about structural biology discoveries in the mTOR field — spanning the last 10 years. They mined the entire Protein Data Bank to ensure that every single paper that has deposited structural coordinates of a protein from the mTOR pathway is cited.

The review is split into major sections, where Karen and Kacper discuss:
– Structure of the mTOR kinase and its associated complexes 1 and 2
– Substrate recognition and regulation mechanisms by mTORC1 and mTORC2
– The mode of operation of mTORC1 on the lysosomal surface
– How various modalities contribute to sensing of the environment by the mTOR pathway.

Our lab received a kind invitation to write this review from Prof. Simon Newstead (Oxford) and Prof. Robert Tampé (Goethe University Frankfurt), who were guest editors of an issue that focused on structural biology of proteins that work in the context of biological membranes. Please see the whole Membranes (2023) issue here, and the editorial by Simon and Robert here.

August 4, 2023

NexGeneGirls — high-school summer project

This summer, the Rogala Lab hosted two high school students in partnership with NexGeneGirls. The NexGeneGirls program integrates immersive hands-on research, leadership development, and career exploration to empower high school girls and provide them with early exposure to research in STEM. Scholars of the program engage in research within leading Bay Area industry or academic laboratories, collaborating closely with mentors to develop and execute a scientific project.

Pictured from left to right: Karen Linde-Garelli (PhD student mentor), Leila Haile (NexGeneGirls scholar), Danielle Carino (NexGeneGirls scholar) — Pictured from left to right:
**Karen Linde-Garelli** (PhD student mentor)
**Leila Haile** (NexGeneGirls scholar)
**Danielle Carino** (NexGeneGirls scholar)]

Leila Haile and Danielle Carino joined the Rogala Lab under the mentorship of Karen Linde-Garelli and Dr. Kacper Rogala. They trained in experimental methods of the lab to learn about and ultimately execute the processes involved in going from “gene to protein” and pilot the production of cost-effective functional enzymatic tools for the lab. The NexGeneGirls scholars focused on cloning, expression, and purification of a bacterial nuclease enzyme to use during the cell lysing process for routine protein production. The outcome of their work was presented at the NexGeneGirls gala in San Francisco, and it was the first in a pipeline for making homemade enzymes for the lab – to use as an alternative for purchasing costly consumables.

March 22, 2023

Kacper gives a talk at the SCI Retreat

Today, Kacper was representing our lab at the 2023 Stanford Cancer Institute retreat. He talked about the ongoing projects in the lab, and how our team is looking forward to collaborations with in vivo biologists and clinicians — to translate our therapeutic ideas into potential future cures for patients.

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RESEARCH

Metabolic growth control

Our mission is to elucidate how cells make growth decisions — to grow or not to grow — based on their environmental conditions, such as availability of nutrients or growth factors. We synthesize proteins responsible for these decision-making processes, and we determine what these proteins look like in three dimensions and how they function.

It turns out that many of these growth decision-making proteins interact with the surface of the lysosome, which beyond its nutrient-recycling function, also works as a sophisticated signaling center, able to sense the availability of nutrients and direct cellular metabolism. Working together, these proteins are able to adjust biological metabolism by switching between anabolism (growth) and catabolism (recycling) — in response to the environment, and in the matter of minutes. Collectively, we call these proteins “the mTOR pathway”, because the major enforcer of these decisions is a protein kinase called mTOR.

mTOR is supported by Raptor and mLST8 in assembling mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1), which docks and gets activated on the lysosomal surface via association with two GTPases: Rag and Rheb. These GTPases are sensitive to nutrients and growth factors and constitute the molecular AND logic gate for cellular growth.

Our lab is deciphering how this decision-making system works.

RESEARCH

Nutrient trafficking

We are fascinated by how nutrients are trafficked inside cells — by membrane protein transporters, and how that trafficking is hijacked and exploited to fuel cancer growth. For example, many oncogene-transformed pancreatic cancers often elude even the harshest chemotherapy treatments, because they can survive in nutrient-poor environments while other cells cannot. These cancer cells rewire their metabolism into macrophage-style consumers of extracellular protein. Instead of relying on standard nutrient uptake of metabolites, these cancer cells scavenge and recycle protein (via macropinocytosis and autophagy), digest it inside lysosomes, and then release it as amino acids to fuel their growth. It turns out that the release of digested amino acids from the lysosome to cytosol is fully controlled by nutrient transporters, and our lab is developing novel therapies that specifically target cancer cells based on their unorthodox eating habits.

Beyond their canonical function of ferrying nutrients, these transporters also serve as receptors and regulators to actively fine-tune the cellular responses to fluctuating nutrient levels. With structural and chemical biology tools, our lab is spearheading efforts towards revealing how these transceptors (transporters + receptors) work and how they communicate with the growth machinery of the cell.

At all stages of our work, we develop binders — and by binders we mean small molecules or biologics (antibodies / nanobodies) that interact with a target protein. Such interactions often result in either inhibition or augmentation of cellular function of these proteins. And we use these binders as research tools, and also as starting points for the development of novel cancer therapeutics — in collaborations with chemists, computational biologists, bioengineers and clinicians.

People

Kacper Rogala

Principal Investigator

Dr. Kacper Rogala is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine with a joint appointment between the Department of Structural Biology and the Department of Chemical and Systems Biology. He is also a Leader in the Stanford Cancer Institute.

BSc(Hons): University of Edinburgh, Scotland
MRes: University College London, England
DPhil: University of Oxford, England
Postdoctoral Fellow: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Kacper was born and raised in Poland, and educated in three wonderful British cities: Oxford, London and Edinburgh, where he studied chemistry of living things, or simply — biochemistry. During his studies, Kacper developed a deep passion for proteins — how they work, what they look like, and how they interact with other proteins and small molecules. This passion led him to pursue a trans-Atlantic postdoc between two Cambridges: one in the UK and one in Massachusetts. As a researcher at MIT, the Whitehead Institute, the Broad Institute, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Kacper began unraveling the mechanisms of nutrient sensing on the surface of lysosomes.

Kacper joined Stanford as an assistant professor in 2022, and together with his team they are leading the charge towards mechanistic understanding of how cells control metabolism in response to nutrients and growth factors, and ways to modulate these activities with chemical probes — for the benefit of patients.

You can listen to an interview with Kacper by the Tuberous Sclerosis Association.

And here is another short interview with Kacper — from his time at MIT.

Kacper has earned numerous awards for his work, including: • The Peer Reviewed Cancer Career Development Award from the United States Department of Defense • The NIH Pathway to Independence Award from the National Cancer Institute • Margaret and Herman Sokol Postdoctoral Award in Biomedical Research from the Whitehead Institute • Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Award from the Charles A. King Trust • Junior Research Fellowship from the Tuberous Sclerosis Association • Best Master of Research Student Prize from University College London for the top graduating student.

Maximilian Wranik

Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Maximilian Wranik is a postdoctoral scholar and a Life Science Alliance Bridging Excellence Fellow in the Rogala Lab. Max collaborates with the group of Gergely Papp at EMBL Grenoble.

BS, StEx, MS: Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany
Visiting Scholar: Structural Genomics Consortium, University of Oxford, England
PhD: Paul Scherrer Institute, UZH/ETH Life Science Graduate School, Switzerland

Max was born and grew up in Germany. He is a trained structural biologist, and earned his PhD by pushing the boundaries of time-resolved serial crystallography. At Paul Scherrer Institute, he led a large effort to characterize the dynamics of anti-cancer drug unbinding from tubulin — across the 1 ns to 100 ms time scale, shedding light on the mechanisms of how microtubule-destabilizing agents work.

In the Rogala Lab, Max is using cryo-electron microscopy to unravel the mechanisms of action of nutrient transceptors and large protein complexes in the mTOR pathway.

Hobbies:
Soccer, chess.s

Publication highlights:

Wranik, Kępa, Beale et al. 2023. Nature Communications. PubMed: 38042952 // Journal website.
Wranik et al. 2023. Nature Communications. PubMed: 36807348 // Journal website.

Yuri Choi

Postdoctoral Associate

Dr. Yuri Choi is a postdoctoral scholar in the Rogala Lab.

BS: Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
PhD: Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea

Yuri was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. She was trained as a structural biologist, and received her PhD from Seoul National University. Yuri’s doctoral work was focused on revealing biological relationships between proteins and their binding partners using X-ray crystallography. She is interested in molecular mechanisms of membrane proteins, and in the Rogala Lab, Yuri is leading membrane-focused cryo-EM projects.

Fun fact:
Yuri loves watching baseball games!

Publication highlights:

Choi et al. 2022. Nucleic Acids Research. PubMed: 35920317 // Journal website.
Choi et al. 2022. Communications Biology. PubMed: 35484224 // Journal website.

Jahaun Azadmanesh

Postdoctoral Associate

Dr. Jahaun Azadmanesh is a postdoctoral scholar in the Rogala Lab.

BS: University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska
PhD: University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska

Jahaun was born and raised in Nebraska. He is a trained structural biologist and earned his PhD through a cross-country collaboration with NASA and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. With NASA, Jahaun sent protein to the International Space Station for microgravity crystallization. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Jahaun performed neutron diffraction on microgravity-grown protein crystals to investigate how protons are transferred in metalloenzymes. After his PhD, Jahaun was trained in X-ray spectroscopy at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to study the electron orbitals involved in metalloenzyme reactions.

In the Rogala Lab, Jahaun is investigating how nutrient transporters are exploited by cancer cells to fuel their growth.

Fun facts:
Jahaun has seen several SpaceX launches at Kennedy Space Center. Outside science, Jahaun is an avid weightlifter.

Publication highlights:

Azadmanesh et al. 2024. Nature Communications. PubMed: 39013847 // Journal website.
Azadmanesh et al. 2023. Journal of Biological Chemistry. PubMed: 36463962 // Journal website.
Azadmanesh et al. 2021. Nature Communications. PubMed: 33824320 // Journal website.

Karen Linde-Garelli

PhD Student

Karen Linde-Garelli is enrolled in the Cancer Biology — Biosciences PhD program at Stanford, and is currently pursuing a PhD in the Rogala Lab. Karen is also co-mentored by Dr. Katrin Svensson at Stanford Pathology.

BSc: Rochester Institute of Technology, New York

Karen was born in Argentina, and grew up in Texas. Before committing to a PhD degree at Stanford, Karen worked at a number of pharma / biotech / non-profit companies, innovating and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. At Regeneron, she developed code to automate bioreactor operation and maintenance, leading to improved yields of biologic-producing cells. At ATCC, she worked on developing a working assay for immune checkpoint therapies. At Relay Therapeutics, Karen worked on protein-protein interaction studies to probe small molecule inhibitors for allosteric pockets of protein kinases. At the Whitehead Institute, Karen worked on structural biology of mTOR proteins, involved in sensing and trafficking of nutrients.

Karen is a protein chemist extraordinaire, currently leading a project focused on cracking the mechanisms of nutrient transport between the lysosome and cytosol.

Fun fact:
During her high-school years, Karen used to playe clarinet semi-professionally, which involved tours all over the US, and including a special show in the White House.

Publication highlights:
Linde-Garelli and Rogala 2023 (REVIEW). Current Opinion in Structural Biology. PubMed: 36807348 // Journal website.

Umay Ertekin

PhD Student

Umay Eren Ertekin is a doctoral student in the Stanford Chemistry PhD program, and is currently pursuing a PhD in the Rogala Lab.

BSc: Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye
MSc: Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye

Umay was born in the United States. Growing up, he traveled frequently with his family and lived in Türkiye, Pakistan, South Africa and the Netherlands. Fascinated by the world of matter at the molecular scale, he studied chemistry at Bilkent University in Türkiye. During his undergraduate education, Umay performed research on metal oxide-based photocatalytic materials and the design of an autocatalytic organic system based on hydrogen bonding catalysis. For his Master’s thesis, Umay studied the molecular mechanisms underlying Hofmeister effects, and he discovered a novel mode of interaction between greasy cations and macromolecules in solution. At Stanford, he is excited to expand his knowledge of structural techniques and to explore the most sophisticated molecular entities of all: proteins.

In the Rogala Lab, Umay is studying proteins involved in the control of cell growth and investigating the mechanisms of their interactions.

Fun facts:
Outside of the lab, Umay loves playing board games with friends. He is passionate about social justice activism and intersectional, collective liberation. He also has grapheme-color synesthesia.

Publication highlights:

Ertekin and Okur 2024. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. PubMed: 38835205 // Journal website.
Gündoğdu, Topuzlu, Mutlu, Ertekin, and Okur 2024. Langmuir. PubMed: 38861700 // Journal website.

Steven Truong

MD-PhD Student

Steven Truong is enrolled in the Stanford MD-PhD Medical Scientist Training Program and is currently pursuing a PhD in the Rogala Lab.

SB: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
MPhil: University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England
MA: Royal Holloway, University of London, London, England

Steven grew up in Minnesota. During his undergraduate years at MIT, he worked to develop diabetes therapies and to understand the disease’s pathogenesis. This personal interest in diabetes grew into an awe for all things metabolism. He likes to draw and stare at metabolic pathways, just as an art student appreciates paintings. After all, there are alkynes of ways to admire nature’s beauty.

In the Rogala Lab, Steven studies regulators of the mTOR pathway, from metabolites to proteins. He is especially interested in how these regulators translate to therapeutic potential.

Steven has been awarded a prestigious Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans to pursue his MD-PhD studies at Stanford.

Fun fact:
Steven runs a photography business—taking regular photos, not of the electron microscope kind. If you need professional photos, feel free to reach out at www.sdtruong.com!

Rafał Skopek

Visiting PhD Student

Rafał Skopek is a Fulbright Scholar and a Visiting PhD Student in the Rogala Lab.

BS: Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
MS: University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Rafał is in the final year of his PhD at the Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology, Polish Academy of Sciences. His PhD research has been centered on the synergistic effects of combining all-trans retinoic acid with small-molecule inhibitors for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia. Currently, Rafał is visiting Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar.

In the Rogala Lab, Rafał is pursuing a project focused on the role of nutrient transporters in cancer.

Fun fact:
In addition to science, Rafał is also a Polish and European patent attorney trainee. In his free time, he enjoys scuba diving.

Publication highlights:

Skopek et al. 2023 (REVIEW). International Journal of Molecular Sciences. PubMed: 36982453 // Journal website.
Lieto*, Skopek* et al. 2022 (REVIEW). International Journal of Molecular Sciences. PubMed: 36012421 // Journal website.

Gabriella Chatman

Postbaccalaureate Student

Gabriella Chatman is a postbaccalaureate student in the Rogala Lab.

BSc: The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

Gabriella was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her passion for structural biology research began in 2021 when she held a pipette for the first time and characterized a set of small molecule inhibitors of N-terminal Acetyltransferase A. During her undergraduate career, Gabriella was able to work on four research projects that each deepened her desire to pursue a career in research.

In the Rogala Lab, Gabriella is exploring how cancer cells use nutrient transporters and building upon her research skills in preparation for graduate school.

Fun facts:
Gabriella is a classically trained pianist and began playing at the age of 4 with Chopin being her favorite composer. She enjoys reading, learning new languages, and exercising.

Francie Igboabuchi

Postbaccalaureate Student

Francie Igboabuchi is a Stanford REACH postbaccalaureate student in the Rogala Lab.

AS: Green River College, Auburn, Washington
BSc: Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

Francie was born and raised in Abuja, Nigeria before moving to the United States in 2018 to pursue higher education. She began her academic journey with a focus on obtaining a medical degree, but later discovered a new passion for research during her college years. Her interest peaked when she worked on designing a potential vaccine for a mutant strain of valley fever. Currently, Francie is dedicated to honing her research skills through the Stanford Postbaccalaureate REACH Program in preparation for graduate school.

In the Rogala Lab, Francie is studying peripheral membrane proteins on the surface of lysosomes, and how they come together to initiate signaling cascades.

Fun facts:
In her free time, Francie enjoys exploring, traveling, hosting friends, cooking, baking, strength training, and also spending time with loved ones. Tinker Bell and 1917 are her favorite movies of all time.

Joshua Ishimoto

Postbaccalaureate Student

Joshua Ishimoto is a postbaccalaureate student in the Rogala Lab.

BS: University of California, Santa Barbara, California

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Joshua’s passion for the sciences began at an early age from exploring the rich biodiversity of California’s shrublands to dissecting all manner of specimens under his My First Lab Duo-Scope. From there his deep curiosity would soon manifest itself as a drive to analyze the latest scientific publications without respite while earning a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There he utilized his data analytic skills derived from his time spent as an undergraduate math/physics tutor to co-develop novel Matlab analytical codes in the Matthieu Louis’ Systems Biology Lab for the purposes of building a model of sensorimotor integration.

In the Rogala Lab, Joshua is exploring the molecular mechanisms behind mTOR nutrient sensing in the context of macro-level metabolic regulation.

Fun facts & hobbies:
For his free time, Joshua enjoys hiking, long-distance biking, nature drawing, and just generally getting out into nature. He especially loves going off the beaten path when out herping or bird watching — despite the grievances of the local fauna! When not in nature, he can be found touring the local library of old history books, playing with his cat, and enjoying reruns of Magnum PI.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS

blue & bold — Rogala Lab member
Ψ — equal contribution
@ — corresponding author

Structural mechanisms of the mTOR pathway

Karen Y Linde-Garelli, Kacper B Rogala@.

Current Opinion in Structural Biology. 83(102663). 2023 August 10.

Structure of the nutrient-sensing hub GATOR2

Max L ValensteinΨ@, Kacper B RogalaΨ@, Pranav V. Lalgudi, Edward J Brignole, Xin Gu, Robert A Saxton, Lynne Chantranupong, Jonas Kolibius, Jan-Philipp Quast, David M Sabatini.

Nature. 607(7919):610-616. 2022 July 13.

Cryo-EM Structure of the Human FLCN-FNIP2-Rag-Ragulator Complex.

Kuang ShenΨ, Kacper B RogalaΨ, Hui-Ting Chou, Rick K Huang, Zhiheng Yu, David M Sabatini

Cell. 179(6):1319-1329.e8. 2019 November 27.

Structural basis for the docking of mTORC1 on the lysosomal surface.

Kacper B Rogala, Xin Gu, Jibril F Kedir, Monther Abu-Remaileh, Laura F Bianchi, Alexia M S Bottino, Rikke Dueholm, Anna Niehaus, Daan Overwijn, Ange-Célia Priso Fils, Sherry X Zhou, Daniel Leary, Nouf N Laqtom, Edward J Brignole, David M Sabatini.

Science. 366(6464):468-475. 2019 October 25.

Show all publications

Join the Rogala Lab

Our lab is friendly to trainees from all walks of life, and we cherish trust, inclusiveness and intellectual curiosity, where no question is too big to study, as long as we have the right approach and a unique angle. Most importantly, our lab operates with a growth mindset for all of our trainees, and we put a heavy emphasis on training and skills development — across a wide range of experimental and computational techniques. And through collaboration, strong work ethic, seeking feedback, and trying out new strategies, we drive innovation and novel discoveries for our team.

If this is something you might be interested in, please contact Kacper directly. We are always on the look out for driven individuals to join our lab! Even if we do not have an open position currently advertised, please message us if you think you can fit into our team.

Please write a few lines about yourself — about your previous research experience, and what you liked about our lab that made you email us! We will be very happy to tell you more about potential projects, our style of doing research, and importantly — how this lab can be an opportunity for you to become even better scientifically, and how in this lab, the translational nature of our work can make an impact in patients’ lives — by cracking challenging basic science questions and developing novel therapeutics.

We are always looking for highly driven candidates with expertise in either structural biology, chemical biology, biochemistry, bioengineering, or cell biology. Please provide your CV, cover letter, and contact information to three reference writers. We set the compensation of our postdocs to the Stanford rates, and we strongly encourage the candidates to explore applying for extramural fellowships and grants to support their research.

Among the many fellowships and funding opportunities available to postdocs at Stanford (see a comprehensive list here), you might also be eligible for a number of programs specifically focused on postdocs from underrepresented backgrounds — please see the list here.

General Information about postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford may be found at the Stanford Postdoctoral Scholars site.

We are accepting graduate students from all Stanford science and engineering programs (PhD, MD/PhD). First year students who are interested in joining our lab please message Kacper directly, attach your CV, and say a few words about yourself.

In general, our lab is most suitable to highly motivated graduate students with keen interest in protein chemistry, structural biology, chemical biology and drug discovery. If you are thrilled by the prospect of discovering fundamental biological mechanisms and applying that knowledge in our shared quest to fight cancer, then this lab is for you.

Please note that at Stanford, prospective PhD and MD/PhD students apply to graduate programs (for example Stanford Biosciences Home Programs), and only through those programs they join individual labs, including ours. Prior to joining their thesis lab, PhD students rotate in 3 different labs (on average) to find the topic and the environment that works best for them.

Exchange PhD students (American and international) — we will be happy to host you for a part of your PhD thesis in our lab — to work in collaboration with us on a specific project. If you are studying cell growth / nutrient sensing / nutrient trafficking, please get in touch with Kacper and get the conversation started. Primary requirement: you will need to be fully enrolled in a PhD program at your home university.

Fulbright Scholars — Our lab has partnered with the US Fulbright Commission to offer 10-month visiting studentships to doctoral students from Poland. These studentships are a part of the Fulbright Junior Research Award program and are open for applications annually. Please visit the Fulbright Poland website for instructions on how to apply, and please feel to contact Kacper directly if you would like to learn more about this unique opportunity.

We are accepting Master’s students currently enrolled in American and international universities — for their thesis research project. We expect from you a minimum of an 8-months commitment towards your project.

We welcome students from a broad range of science and engineering backgrounds — including biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, biophysics, biotechnology, bioengineering, chemistry, chemical engineering, pharmacology, bioinformatics, or similar.

Please email Kacper directly, and provide your CV and contact information to one reference writer.

We are accepting students enrolled in Stanford postbaccalaureate programs. There are two main postbac programs at Stanford: REACH and ChEM-H Target Discovery. If you have been admitted to these programs and you’d like to explore the possibility of joining our lab, please message Kacper directly, attach your CV, and say a few words about yourself.

In general, our lab is most suitable to highly motivated postbac students who want to challenge themselves with the responsibility of running their own independent research project. We normally split postbac time 50:50 — between leading their own unique project in the lab, and supporting postdocs and senior PhD students in getting advanced projects over the finish line.

Research Assistants. Our lab is primarily focused on training students and postdocs, and we normally do not have open positions for staff. However, if you think you might be eligible for the NIH Supplements to federal grants (e.g. diversity / career break), please reach out directly to Kacper. Our lab is supported by the National Cancer Institute and National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and Kacper is open to discussing a possibility of co-applying for supplements from these federal agencies with you.

We are accepting Stanford undegraduate students to join our lab.

We are looking for dedicated students whose goal is to pursue a PhD in the future. We are specifically looking for students who want to commit to our lab for the entire duration of their college career. During term-time, you will be working part-time with your mentor (either a postdoctoral fellow or a PhD student), and during summer, you will work full-time and be responsible for your own unique research project.

Interested undegraduate students, please email Kacper directly.

Our lab partners with the local NexGeneGirls program to provide an immersive 6-week summer research program to high school students from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Beyond NexGeneGirls, there are several other opportunities that Stanford offers to high school students interested in gaining research experience.

Chemical & Systems Biology — Our department runs its own high-school outreach program, where a group of students is invited on campus during the summer to shadow researchers in the lab and perform basic molecular biology experiments. Please contact the CSB-DECIDE chairs to learn more about the program.
Stanford University — The University offers a number of programs for high school students that you might be interested in — please see this catalog here.

Please note that our lab can only accommodate students from organized programs and unfortunately, we cannot offer summer placements to individual students applying directly to our lab.