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Dr. Maricela Maldonado joined the Áù¾ÅÉ«Ìà Department of Biomedical Engineering as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2022. Dr. Maldonado obtained her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Riverside in 2016. She was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Translational Research and Cellular Therapeutics within the Arthur Riggs Diabetes and Metabolism Research Institute at City of Hope from 2017-22.

Dr. Maldonado’s research focuses on developing polymeric scaffolds to control stem cell behaviors for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. Her research applies a multidisciplinary approach to engineer cell-instructive biomaterials to generate functional cells/tissues. During her graduate studies, Dr. Maldonado developed distinct nanofibrous scaffolds to study the effects of microenvironment stiffness on pluripotent stem cell behaviors. Recently, she utilized a novel cell/tissue culture system to investigate the effects of dynamic stiffness during pancreas development.