Michael Longaker

Current Research Interests

Deane P. and Louise Mitchell Professor and Vice Chair
Co-Director, Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine
Director of the Program in Regenerative Medicine
Director, Children’s Surgical Research
Director of Research, Divison of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Professor, by Courtesy, Department of Bioengineering
Professor, by Courtesy, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Department of Surgery
Stanford University School of Medicine
Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital

Dr. Michael T. Longaker joined the Stanford University School of Medicine on September 1, 2000 as Director of Children’s Surgical Research in the Department of Surgery, Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and the Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital. In 2003, he was named the Deane P. and Louise Mitchell Professor and in 2010 became Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery. As Director of Program in Regenerative Medicine and Co-Director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and Director of the Children’s Surgical Research, Dr. Longaker has the responsibility to develop research programs in the broad areas of developmental biology, epithelial biology and tissue repair, tissue engineering, and stem cell biology. Prior to joining Stanford, Dr. Longaker was the John Marquis Converse Professor of Plastic Surgery and held the positions of Director of Surgical Basic Science and Director of Plastic Surgery Research at the Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery at the New York University School of Medicine.

Michael Longaker’s extensive research experience includes the cellular and molecular biology of extracellular matrix with specific applications to the differences between fetal and post-natal wound healing, the biology of keloids and hypertrophic scars, the cellular and molecular events in craniofacial development and stem cell biology. He brings to Stanford his unique understanding of wound healing, fetal wound healing research, developmental biology, tissue engineering, and stem cell biology.

Dr. Longaker is the recipient of the prestigous Flance-Karl Award from the American Surgical Association, the Jacobson Promising Investigatorn Award from the American College of Surgeons, and was a James IV Traveling Fellow. He is a member Association for Academic Surgeons, the Society of University Surgeons, American Surgical Association and American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science. He served as Treasuer and subsequeently President for the Society of University Surgeons. To date, he has published over 1050 publications and has numerous federal grants to support his research. He has recruited 6 faculty to the Children’s Surgical Research Program, all of whom are NIH funded.

Dr. Longaker earned his undergraduate degree at Michigan State University, (where he played varsity basketball and was a member of the 1979 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Team) and his medical degree at Harvard Medical School. He completed his general surgical residency at the University of California, San Francisco, a residency in Plastic Surgery at NYU and a craniofacial fellowship at UCLA. The majority of his research training took place while he was a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the Fetal Treatment Program under Dr. Mike Harrison and in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Banda in Radiobiology, both at UCSF. In December 2003, Dr. Longaker earned his M.B.A. from University of California – Berkeley and Columbia University, in the inaugural class of their combined program and was elected into Columbia University's Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society.