Portrait of Lara Weed

Lara Weed, PhD

I am a Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance Postdoctoral Fellow in the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory (SISL), advised by Dr. Mykel Kochenderfer. My research is centered on understanding human health and performance through interpreting the hidden language of the body. I practice what I call human circadian engineering, turning the science of biological timing into tools that protect health and enhance performance for individuals and societies. In SISL, I am developing technologies to accelerate jet lag adaptation in athletes.

I earned my MS (2022) and PhD (2026) in Bioengineering at Stanford in the Zeitzer Circadian Research Laboratory with Dr. Jamie Zeitzer as an NIH F31 Predoctoral Fellow (NHLBI). My dissertation, "Operationalizing Human Circadian and Sleep Regulation for Wearable Sensing and Real-World Applications," developed engineering methods that bring laboratory knowledge of circadian and sleep regulation into real-world measurement, with applications to travel, time policy, population health, and human performance.

Before Stanford, I earned my BS in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Vermont, where I developed clinical wearable tools for gait and biomechanics in Dr. Ryan McGinnis's M-Sense Research Group, and I completed a year-long co-op at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. My interest in the body's rhythms began much earlier, as a competitive gymnast and later a D1 heptathlete. I am on the 2026–27 faculty job market.

weed@stanford.edu