As a surgeon-scientist, my overall goal is to improve our ability cure the most aggressive head and neck cancers while also abating treatment toxicity for ones readily curable by existing therapies. My lab's work has pursued how multiple discrete subpopulations of malignant cells within these tumors cooperatively resist therapy via both tumor cell autonomous mechanisms and crosstalk with the stromal microenvironment. In the process, we have developed the ability to analyze heterogeneity and phenotypic plasticity within cancer cell lines, patient-derived xenografts, and primary human cancer samples based on molecular and functional criteria.