
Dr. Norton, Jeffrey is the Robert and Mary Ellenburg Professor Emeritus of Surgery. His research focuses on cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in pancreatic cancer both in a mouse model and human patients using organoids to mimic the tumor microenvironment (TME). He has 429 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He works closely with Dr Longaker.

Fell, Gillian is a senior scientist in the Longaker lab and a Clinical Instructor in the Pediatric Surgery division at Stanford Health. She completed her MD degree at Harvard Medical School and PhD degree in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard University. She completed general surgery residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, as well as postdoctoral research studies at Boston Children’s Hospital. She completed a pediatric surgery fellowship at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. In the Longaker Lab she focuses on hepatic development, fibrosis, and regeneration. She is pursuing several translational studies relevant to metabolic-associated Steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in the pediatric bariatric population as well as cholestatic liver disease in the intestinal failure population. Another area of study includes novel strategies for weaning off intravenous nutrition in the intestinal failure population.

Dr. Januszyk, Michael is an Instructor in the Department of Surgery. He has spent his academic career working and studying in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology. His areas of expertise include single cell multi-omics, wound healing biology, machine learning, and data mining of electronic health records. He has received numerous research grants from the NIH, NSF, DOD, and American Heart Association, among others, leading to more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. He performed his PhD studies at Stanford under the advisership of Dr. Atul Butte during which time he developed a computational framework for the analysis of complex tissue populations in heterogeneous disease states. He subsequently trained in reconstructive surgery at UCLA and completed an advanced wound care clinical fellowship at Stanford.
Michael has successfully adapted his prior work on single cell transcriptomics (using multiplexed qPCR) to the modern landscape of next-gen sequencing, working closely with Stanford’s Functional Genomics Facility (SFGF) to pioneer new methods for the evaluation of cellular programming with spatial complexity, including the first ever platform for imputation of spatial epigenomics. He has applied these methods to expand our understanding of the complex wound environment, particularly as it relates to external mechanical forces, and identified a novel fibroblast subpopulation that is mechano-responsive and proliferates clonally to promote tissue regeneration in healing wounds.

Quarto, Natalina is a Senior Scientist in Dr. Longaker's laboratory. She received her PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Napoli Federico II and Specialization in Medical Genetic from the University of Roma "La Sapienza". She pursued her postdoctoral research at the New York University with a focus on FGF-2 Biology. In her research, Natalina successfully identified for the first time that there are three forms of Fibroblasts Growth Factor-2 (FGF-2), namely high molecular weight (HMW-FGF-2) and low molecular weight (LMW-FGF-2) with different sub cellular distribution and functions. She was able to unveil and define how these forms promote distinct biological outcomes. She then continued her research on FGF-2 signaling pathways at the University of Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France.
After that, Natalina spent 3 years among the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) and the Rockefeller University in New York where she dedicated her research time to cloning tissue-PA and LTBP1 genes from Xenopus and performing functional studies using this organism.
In 2000, she moved from New York alongside Dr. Michael Longaker to join him in his new laboratory at Stanford University. Since then, her major scientific interest is centered on skeletal biology and regenerative medicine.
One of her main research interests focuses extensively on calvarial bones of different embryonic tissue origin, and on how different tissue origin impacts the osteogenic potential and skeletal repair of these bones.
This investigation focuses on the neural-crest derived frontal bone and paraxial-mesoderm derived parietal bone. It has unveiled significant and substantial differences between the two parietal bones highlighting a key molecular mechanism(s) responsible for the different osteogenic capacity and tissue repair observed between the two bones.
A second area of research is centered on the development and patterning of cranial sutures, specifically the posterior frontal (PF) suture (metopic in humans) - a fusing suture. She has identified the timing and process through which the PF suture closes demonstrating two things: this suture fuses through an endochondral ossification process, and that canonical Wnt signaling is a major player in controlling the patency of cranial sutures. Natalina's current major focus is to understand the molecular mechanism(s) underlying the premature closure of a suture, namely craniosynostosis. Current research on this topic is revealing novel bio-molecular aspects of the craniosynostosis which suggest that this pathological condition is an outcome of unbalance in stem and progenitor populations.
On her free time, Natalina enjoys sailing and growing orchids.