Stanford Surgery News

The Stanford Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program has accepted Drs. Stephanie Chao and Clifford Sheckter into the KL2 Mentored Career Development Program. The KL2 Mentored Career Development Program is funded through the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Chao and Sheckter are two of the four scholars selected from a highly competitive application process to receive support.

Stanford Health Care celebrates National Hispanic Heritage and Women in Medicine with a special Med Staff Spotlight story on Micaela Esquivel, MD.

Two surgeons will join Stanford's Division of Abdominal Transplantation by the end of the year: Dr. Kazunari Sasaki and Dr. Varvara A. Kirchner.

The approximately $2M grant will fund their project: "Deciphering the Endothelial Cell-Cardiomyocyte Crosstalk in LMNA Cardiomyopathy" over five years.

S-SPIRE Center's Dr. Alex Sox-Harris has been promoted to full professor, NTL-R effective October 1, 2021.

S-SPIRE Center's Dr. Todd Wagner has been promoted to full professor NTL-R effective October 1, 2021.

Dr. Matthew Murphy has joined the Plastic Surgery Residency Program as Associate Program Director. Dr. Murphy will be an additional leader for trainees as the program expands from 18-28 residents over the next several years. Specifically. he will serve as the clinical leader for the Stanford service and faculty mentor for resident wellness.

Dr. Lisa M. Knowlton, an assistant professor in the Section of Acute Care Surgery, received an R21 grant. The award from the NIH will fund her research project "Reducing Disparities for the Uninsured: Identifying Opportunities for Improved Coverage Through Emergency Medicaid Programs."

Stanford University bills itself as “A place for learning, discovery, innovation, expression and discourse.” While the statement is aimed at prospective undergrads, the same can be said for Stanford staff, particularly in the case of Julia Miranda. Originally hired in 2018 as an administrative assistant, she is now the chair’s administrator and a grants manager in the department.

The Departments of General Surgery and Obstetrics and Gynecology (ObGyn) have combined resources to create a new elective rotation designed to give general surgeons the tools they need to provide life-saving obstetric and gynecologic surgical care in low-resource settings, both abroad and in the US.

Dr. Paige Fox has been promoted to Associate Professor effective October 1st. Dr. Fox joined the Plastic Surgery team in 2015 and is currently the Residency Program Director.

General surgery resident Dr. Ioana Baiu has been named a Top 10 finalist for the American College of Surgeons Resident Award for Exemplary Teaching for the second year in a row.

Dr. Tom Weiser will serve as the inaugural Director of Global Engagement for the Department of Surgery. In this role, he will facilitate collaboration and expansion in education, research, clinical training, and innovation that can elevate the profile of Stanford Surgery and advance our mission around the globe.

Dr. Matias Bruzoni has been elected to the LPCHS Medical Executive Committee.

Researchers have discovered how changes in aging skeletal stem cells may be an underlying cause of poor fracture healing, osteoporosis and various blood disorders as well as generalized inflammation and aging (sometimes called “inflammaging”) of cells and systems throughout the body. However, the researchers are also discovering how they might reinvigorate aging skeletal stem cell so that they start acting younger again, potentially reversing these changes.

Lingfeng Luo, PhD has been named a finalist for the Society of Vascular Medicine's (SVM) Young Investigator Award. The top three abstracts submitted to SVM's annual conference are invited to make oral presentations. Dr. Luo will present "Efficient suppression of vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation and intimal hyperplasia by targeting phosphodiesterase 10A."

Dr. Amanda Kirane will join the Department's Surgical Oncology Section effective September 1, 2021. Dr. Kirane will be the Director of Cutaneous Surgical Oncology.

Dr. Joe Forrester received the Surgical Infection Society (SIS) Foundation's Junior Faculty Clinical Research Fellowship Award. The grant will fund his proposal “Using species distribution models to predict the distribution of infection with MRSA and C.difficile in the United States."

Vascular Surgeon Dr. Elsie Ross has been selected to receive a 2021 Clinical Scientist Development Award (CSDA) from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The $495,000 of funding over three years will support the work described in her proposal: "The application of deep learning for automated vascular imaging analysis."

Dr. Daniel Delitto will join the Division of General Surgery Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary (HPB) team as an Assistant Professor (UML) effective September 1.