Faculty

Maléne is Instructor in cardiovascular medicine and manages the Human Molecular Moonshot of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at Stanford, as well as the Bioinformatics Center for the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC). She is from Stockholm, Sweden, where she completed her combined bachelor and master’s degree in Biomedicine (2007) at the Karolinska Institute.

She earned her PhD in Medicine (2015) from the Karolinska Institute for her work on endurance training adaptation of skeletal muscle in humans. During her PhD, she investigated the epigenomic and transcriptomic response to training, and the effect of repeated training on skeletal muscle adaptation, or “muscle memory”. She was awarded a Wallenberg fellowship to fund her postdoctoral research in the Ashley lab, which focused on the multi-omic effects of exercise through MoTrPAC, and how protein-truncating variants alpha-actinin 2 cause cardiomyopathy in humans.

She has a particular scientific interest in the molecular and genomic aspects of training adaptation and human performance for precision health, primarily in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Outside work, she likes to travel with her family and enjoy the California weather through exercising, hiking, surfing and the occasional wine tasting.

Dr. Parikh is cardiologist specializing in the care of patients with inherited cardiovascular diseases. She completed clinical cardiology fellowship at Stanford School of Medicine and her medical residency at the University of California, San Francisco. Funded by research grant from the NIH, she currently studies multiple causes of cardiomyopathy in the laboratory. She has a particular clinical and scientific interest in inherited arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathies, which are an increasingly recognized disease entity. Dr. Parikh is currently using patient cohort genetics, high throughput molecular biology and human induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes to study variant pathogenicity in RBM20 cardiomyopathy.

Chloe Reuter is a clinical and research genetic counselor with the Stanford Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease and Stanford Center for Undiagnosed Diseases. After growing up in Michigan and completing her undergraduate degree in upstate New York, she fled the cold winters for the wonderfully sunny Bay Area. She completed her MS in Human Genetics and Genetic Counseling at Stanford. Working mostly with adults, her clinical interests include arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathies and patients with undiagnosed genetic conditions. She is actively involved in research pertaining to the integration of genomic technologies into clinical care and defining arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathies, with particular interest in the DSP and FLNC genes. She’s also a clinical supervisor and research mentor to genetic counseling students training at Stanford. Outside of work, she loves all things food and travel!

Kinya is an Instructor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. His primary research focus is on the determinants of myocardial function in the normal and diseased heart toward the goal for developing new therapies for heart failure. On a technical level, he possesses an unparalleled range of skills in molecular and cell biology, biomedical engineering, and model organisms research. He received his graduate training at the University of Tokyo, where he studied cardiac mechanics, electrophysiology, and computer simulation to investigate the mechanisms of arrhythmias induced by mechanical stimuli. After he received Ph.D., he moved to Baltimore to work in the laboratory of Dr. David Kass at Johns Hopkins University. He extended his skills and expertise toward the understanding of the pathogenesis of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure with special focus on the influence of mechanical stimuli. After postdoctoral training, he went back to Japan working at Jichi Medical University as an assistant professor, where he developed intravital imaging technologies for cardiovascular events. These skills will allow him to extend his studies from cells to organs, and to human to perform translational study for heart diseases – and establish his own niche in Ashley lab.

Dr. Wheeler is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. His areas of clinical expertise include inherited and infiltrative cardiomyopathies, neuromuscular disease associated cardiomyopathy, and mechanical circulatory support. His clinical research interests include investigating novel therapies for cardiomyopathy, including participation in multi-center randomized trials for cardiac amyloidosis, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and mechanical circulatory support. He is the adult clinical lead and executive director of the Undiagnosed Diseases Clinical Site at Stanford, one of seven NIH-funded clinical sites of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network.

In partnership with Dr. Francois Haddad, he is evaluating immune system dynamics in dilated cardiomyopathy and dystrophin-deficiency mediated cardiomyopathy. He is involved in several additional ongoing initiatives in cardiovascular genomics and genetics, including a study of microRNAs and DNA methylation and risk of atherosclerosis in the Women’s Health Initiative.

His prior work includes research on cost effectiveness of athlete screening, clinical interpretation of whole genome sequencing, and investigating exercise training in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In addition, he maintains active computational and basic research interests, with the goal of improving diagnosis and treatment options for patients with cardiomyopathy by leveraging next-generation sequencing technologies, rich bioinformatics datasets, and bench research in model systems of inherited cardiomyopathy. He is supervised by Dr. Euan Ashley and has collaborations with researchers across the School of Medicine and the University.

Originally from upstate New York, Dr. Wheeler attended Williams College to study biology/physiology and history/foreign relations, while minoring in crew. He then completed his MD and PhD at the University of Chicago. In 2005 he came to Stanford for his postgraduate training in internal medicine, general cardiology, prevention research, cardiovascular genetics, and advanced heart failure, mechanical circulatory support and heart transplantation. He enjoys spending his free time biking, hiking, swimming and snow sports with his wife and sons.