Lopez, Michael started out in the Longaker lab as a CIRM bridges scholar. After his internship he decided to stay in the lab and was hired on as an LSRP. Michael graduated from Humboldt State with a major in microbiology and a minor in chemistry. As an undergrad he worked on mouse stem cells and elucidating novel pluripotency cell signaling pathways. His current work in the Longaker lab focuses on differentiating human induced pluripotent stem cells into bone for the isolation of human skeletal stem cells.