Karen Christman, PhD

Dr. Christman received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2000 and her Ph.D. from the University of California San Francisco and Berkeley Joint Bioengineering Graduate Group in 2003, where she examined in situ approaches to myocardial tissue engineering. She was also a NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles in the fields of polymer chemistry and nanotechnology.

Dr. Christman joined the Department of Bioengineering in 2007 and is a member of the Institute of

Engineering in Medicine and the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. She is a fellow of the American Heart Association and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She has received several awards including the NIH Director’s New Innovator and Transformative Research Awards, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Early Career Translational Research Award, the American Heart Association Western States Innovative Sciences Award, and the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Society’s Young Investigator Award. Dr. Christman is also co-founder of Ventrix, Inc., which is in clinical trials with the cardiac extracellular matrix hydrogel technology developed in her lab at UC San Diego.

Regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, polymer chemistry and bio-nanotechnology, multi-scale bioengineering and biomaterial design

The Christman Lab focuses on developing novel biomaterials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. The lab has a strong translational focus with the main goal of developing minimally invasive, biomaterials based therapies for myocardial infarction, heart failure, and peripheral artery disease. Projects are highly interdisciplinary and involve collaborations with basic scientists, engineers and physicians.