Dr. Jennifer Patterson officially joined IMDEA Materials as a Researcher on February 18, 2021. She heads the new research group on Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine. Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, Dr. Patterson received a B.S.E. in chemical engineering from Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey, USA) in 1998 and a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Washington (Seattle, Washington, USA) in 2007. Her bachelor thesis research was on the characterization of self-assembled fibrils formed from combinatorially designed de novo proteins, working under the guidance of Prof. Michael Hecht, and her dissertation was on the development of hydrogel- and microsphere-based delivery systems to stimulate oriented bone regeneration, in the laboratory of Prof. Patrick Stayton. During her doctoral research, she also collaborated with Prof. Xingde Li to utilize optical coherence tomography (OCT) for the non-invasive monitoring of bone healing and angiogenesis in a rat calvarial critical size defect model.

Dr. Patterson has worked in both industry and academia, with previous positions at Therics, Inc. (USA – one of the first companies to develop 3D printing technology for medical applications), BIOFABICS LDA (Portugal – a company focused on organ-on-chip and bioreactor technologies), and EPFL (Switzerland) and as an assistant professor at KU Leuven (Belgium). During her postdoc in the lab of Prof. Jeffrey Hubbell at EPFL, she gained experience in the molecularly engineered polyethylene glycol hydrogels pioneered by that group. At KU Leuven, she was the leader of a research group on biomaterials and was also a lecturer for master-level courses for the option in biomaterials within the materials engineering degree program. Her research has been published in the top journals in the biomaterials field, including Biomaterials, Biofabrication, and Acta Biomaterialia. To date, she has supervised or co-supervised 5 postdoctoral fellows, 8 Ph.D. students, 2 predoctoral students, 26 master students, and 43 bachelor students.