Dodd Lab Stanford

Dylan Dodd, MD PhD

Principal Investigator

Bio: Dylan Dodd completed his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.  His thesis research was in Professor Isaac Cann’s laboratory in the Department of Microbiology, and focused on the molecular mechanisms for energy capture by gastrointestinal bacteria.  Dylan then moved to Stanford where he completed residency training in Clinical Pathology.  He continued at Stanford as an Instructor in Justin Sonnenburg’s laboratory, where he studied how gastrointestinal bacteria contribute to a large pool of bioactive small molecules that impact host physiology.

Fun fact: IPA is both Dylan's favorite molecule and favorite beer.

Yuanyuan (aedan) liu, PhD

Senior Research Scientist

Bio: Aedan Liu completed her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Her thesis research was in Professor James Imlay’s laboratory in the Department of Microbiology, focusing on the molecular mechanisms of oxidative stress response in bacteria. Aedan then joined Michael Fischbach's lab at UCSF as a post-doc, where she studied capsular biosynthetic gene clusters in Bacteroides. Following post-doctoral research, Aedan joined the Infectious Disease department at Genentech before moving to Stanford to join the Dodd lab as a senior research scientist.

Fun fact: Aedan's Maine Coon is sometimes mistaken for a small dog.

Kazuma Sekiba, MD PhD

Post-Doctoral Scholar

Bio: Kazuma Sekiba is a Japanese physician-scientist who specializes in gastroenterology. After his clinical training, he went on to study at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine, hoping to help patients through basic research. His thesis focused on viral–host interactions fundamental to hepatitis B virus pathogenesis. He was then motivated to study the gut microbiome, which is the biggest community interacting with host, and joined the Dodd lab in July 2021. He is now enjoying his current approach that combines genetics and mass spectrometry to characterize pathways for microbial metabolites that impact human physiology.

Fun fact: Kazuma’s portrait was taken by his three-year-old child.

Michelle miranda-vélez, PHD

Post-Doctoral Scholar

Bio: Michelle received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Florida International University. During her doctorate training with Dr. Joong Ho Moon, her research focused on the synthesis of various mycobacterial membrane-targeting polymers; investigate the structure-activity relationship, and mechanism of action of the polymers against mycobacteria. In Dr. Dodd’s lab, she will be integrating chemistry techniques for characterization of bioactive metabolites by the gut microbiome.

Fun fact: Michelle enjoys documentaries, especially true crime (but will sleep through almost every movie).

Zhiwei Zhou, PHD

Post-Doctoral Scholar

Bio: Zhiwei obtained his Ph.D. in the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biology and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science, where he was supervised by Dr. Zheng-Jiang Zhu. His Ph.D. research focused on developing novel analytical and bioinformatic approaches for LC-MS-based metabolomics. In the Dodd lab, he enjoys using LC-MS and bioinformatics to characterize the metabolites produced by gut microbes and their roles in human health.

Fun fact: Zhiwei is a die-fan of Rocket.

MarY defeo, BS

Graduate Student

Bio: Mary obtained her B.S. in Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences from Penn State University where she studied ruminant nutrition in Dr. Tara Felix’s lab. In the Dodd lab, she focuses on bacterial tryptophan metabolism in the gut and its effect on host physiology.

Fun fact: Mary loves to cook, and during lockdown she entertained herself by cooking her way through a cookbook.

Steven Huang

Undergraduate Researcher

Bio: Steven Huang is currently a UC Berkeley undergraduate intending to major in Molecular and Cellular Biology in the biochemistry track. At the Dodd lab, Steven’s worked on creating a library of bacteria capable of degrading uric acid based on the presence of a uric acid degrading gene cluster.

Fun fact: If you give Steven a camera for the whole day, you’ll catch him wandering around trying to pose people for photos.

Haoqing Chen, PHD

Bio: Haoqing obtained her undergraduate degree in Chemistry at Sun Yat-sen University. She then joined Prof. Chengzhi Cai's lab in University of Houston for doctoral research. She focused on the mechanistic study and biological applications of the copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction. After graduation, she worked as a postdoctoral associate in Prof. Robert Turesky's lab in University of Minnesota, using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to study the formation of DNA adducts with endogenous electrophiles and environmental toxicants. In the Dodd lab, she worked as a research scientist on targeted and untargeted metabolomics related to gut microbiota.

J. Bryce Jarman, PhD

Bio: Bryce obtained an undergraduate degree in chemical biology from UC Berkeley where we worked on protein bioconjugation under Professor Matt Francis. From there he went south to Caltech, where he got a Ph.D. in chemistry with Professor Dennis Dougherty studying both the physical organic chemistry of proteins using noncanconical amino acids as well as new long wavelength photochemical reactions. As a postdoc in the Dodd lab, he studied uric acid metabolism by gut bacteria in relation to gout. Bryce is now a scientist at Persephone Biosciences in San Diego.

Bi-Huei Hou, MS MBA

Bio: Bi-Huei completed her masters degree in the Institute of Botany at the National Chung-Hsing University of Taiwan. She then moved to Chicago where she completed an MBA at the University of Illinois at Chicago before traveling west to Stanford. She worked at the Carnegie Institute for 18 years, first in Shauna Somerville's lab focusing on the defense mechanism of powdery mildew and it’s application for DNA microarrays and then in Wolf Frommer's lab on sugar biosensor technologies. Bi-Huei was the lab manager for the Dodd lab and worked on developing and characterizing a mutant library in the bacterium Clostridium sporogenes.

Weston R. Gray

Bio: Weston spent some time in the Dodd Lab during his time at Stanford as an undergraduate student. He is interested in the multitude of symbiotic relationships that exist in nature, especially the interactions between humans and gastrointestinal microbiota.

Lalla fall, ms

Bio: Lalla worked jointly in the Dodd lab and in ChEM-H as a life sciences research professional helping to establish metabolomics methods and to build our in house chemical reference library.  She now works at Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories as a pharmaceutical development associate.

Bryan tan

Bio: In his junior year at Gunn High School, Bryan worked on an independent research project with one of his classmates under the mentorship of Dr. Dodd. This research was aimed at analyzing the spread of Wolbachia within mosquito populations and how this spread would affect the disease-transmitting abilities of said mosquito population. Bryan hopes to study biomolecular engineering and behavioral economics in college.