This February, the Department of Surgery welcomes two new research faculty members to the Division of Pediatric Surgery.
February New Faculty
David Alvarado, PhD, joins the Division of Pediatric Surgery this month as a research instructor of surgery. Alvarado earned his BS in Microbiology from the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida in 2007. In 2014, he earned his PhD in Cellular and Molecular Medicine from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He then went on to join the Ciorba Laboratory and Research Group at Washington University that same year. In 2020, Alvarado became an instructor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology within the Department of Internal Medicine at Washington University, where he contributed to novel research concerning intestinal infection by COVID-19 and variations of epithelial cell factors following COVID-19 infection. Alvarado will be joining the Warner Laboratory where he will further his contributions to groundbreaking research on mechanisms through which the intestine adapts after massive intestinal loss. Alvarado is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Gastroenterological Association and is the recipient of awards including the 2018-2019 Lawrence C. Pakila, MD IBD Fellowship and an NIH T32 Training Grant.
The Division of Pediatric Surgery also welcomes Jun Guo, PhD, as a research associate professor of surgery. Guo earned his BA in Biology at Nanjing University in Nanjing, China, in 1991. He received his MS from the Department of Histology and Embryology at Dalian Medical University in Dalian, China, in 1997 and went on to earn his PhD from the National Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology at Fundan University in Shanghai, China, in 2000. Guo has extensive experience in the field, having previously served as a postdoctoral associate and associate research scientist at Yale University, and as a research associate in the Division of Pediatric Surgery at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio until 2006. Guo continues his work at Washington University Department of Surgery, where he previously served as an assistant professor from 2007-2018, an associate professor from 2018-2022, and a leader of the Intestinal Adaptation Laboratory at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. During 2022, Guo served as the executive vice president of a therapeutics company based in Shanghai, China. His research efforts have contributed to groundbreaking discoveries in many fields of research, including novel discoveries in small intestinal adaptation after massive small bowel restriction. Guo will return to the laboratory of Brad Warner, MD, to lead further research on adaptation responses in patients following removal or trauma to the intestines to improve long-term outcomes.
The Department of Surgery welcomes Alvarado and Guo to the Division of Pediatric Surgery and the Warner Laboratory and congratulates both on their appointments.