Introduction to Editorial Board Member: Professor Kristi S. Anseth

In this issue of Bioengineering and Translational Medicine, we are pleased to introduce our Editorial Board Member, Prof. Kristi S. Anseth. Prof. Anseth is a Distinguished Professor and the Tony Tisone Endowed Chair in Chemical and Biological Engineering, Associate Professor of Surgery, and the Associate Director of the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. She was the first engineer to be named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator and is one of a select few individuals elected to all three United States National Academies (Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) as well as to the National Academy of Inventors for her major contributions to the fields of biomaterials, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. Prof. Anseth earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering with Highest Distinction from Purdue University where she performed undergraduate research in the laboratory of Prof. Nicholas Peppas. She completed her PhD in the Chemical Engineering department at the University of Colorado Boulder under the advisement of Prof. Christopher Bowman; her doctorate was completed in just 28 months and resulted in 10 first-author publications. Upon graduation, she assumed postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Prof. Robert Langer. In 1996, after just 1 year away from Boulder, she returned to her doctoral alma mater as faculty in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Colorado. Repurposing traditional polymer chemistry approaches for applications in the biological sciences, a theme that permeates much of her research, Prof. Anseth's early efforts sought to synthesize and characterize biodegradable polymeric materials for controlled drug release.