Kara E McCloskey

Biography:

Dr. Kara E. McCloskey, PhD, is a Founding Professor at the University of California, Merced in the Chemical and Materials Engineering (CME) Department and Fellow with the American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineering (AIMBE). She received her degrees in Chemical Engineering from The Ohio State University and Biomedical Engineering Department at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation and was an NIH-NRSA postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology. Early in her career, Dr. McCloskey was awarded a New Faculty Award from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is the Program Directors for a CIRM-funded Training Program in Undergraduate Stem Cell Engineering and Biology (TUSCEB) and the UC Merced Shared Resource Facility (SRL). She has been Founder and Chair of Graduate Program in Biological Engineering and Small-scale Technologies (BEST) and Materials and Biomaterials Science and Engineering (MBSE), and lead developer for UCM’s new B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering. Dr. McCloskey has participated in numerous NSF-funded research centers (CREST-CCBM, STC-CEMB, STC-EBICS and ERC-TARDISS). She is known for her work in directing and characterizing endothelial cells (EC) from embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced-pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. She has co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles in areas from magnetic cell separation, stem cell differentiation, and tissue assembly and is currently focusing her efforts examining cell-material interactions for developing functional tissues.