Ashley Zehnder

I graduated from the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine in 2005, completed a small animal medicine and surgery internship at the Animal Medical Center in New York City in 2006 and a 3-year residency in Companion Avian and Pet Exotic Medicine at the University of California-Davis, becoming boarded in Avian Medicine in 2009. I completed my Cancer Biology PhD in the Khavari Lab at Stanford in 2016 working on novel therapeutic strategies to target altered signaling pathways in epithelial cancers. Since beginning my research training at Stanford, I have pursued interests in cancer biology as well as comparative medicine by maintaining active research interests in both fields. I spearheaded the Zoobiquity Research Symposium held at Stanford in April 2014 and Stanford One Health symposium in 2016, which brought together veterinarians and human medical researchers to discuss research efforts in infectious diseases, cancer as well as novel animal models of disease. I founded the Species Cancer Research Alliance to bring together medical professionals to pursue research interests relating to cancer in non-domestic species to shed light on the biology of tumors in these potentially valuable animal models. Currently, I am founder and CEO of Faunabio. Our focus is on developing a cross-mammal drug discovery platform based on the genomics of hibernation in mammals to aid human health.

January 2019