Professor Anseth, a CU-Boulder Distinguished Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, conducts groundbreaking research developing degradable polymers that act as scaffolds or frameworks to stimulate the growth of new human tissues to replace those lost by injuries and disease. Anseth and her colleagues anticipate the technology will be used in the coming years to help regenerate human cartilage and defective heart valves, mend shattered bones, produce insulin for diabetics, and grow healthy neurons to replace diseased brain tissue. One of the most promising applications is to use tissue engineering to repair injured knee cartilage by extracting healthy cartilage from a patient, blending it with the gel-like scaffolding, and injecting it back into the knee to grow new, healthy cartilage. She has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering for pioneering the rational design of biomaterials for tissue engineering, drug delivery and biosensing applications. A member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she received the National Science Foundation’s highest honor for a young researcher, the Alan T. Waterman Award, and the American Society for Engineering Education’s Curtis W. McGraw Award—given each year to a faculty member under 40 in recognition for contributions to both engineering education and research. Anseth holds the Tisone Professorship in chemical and biological engineering at CU-Boulder. In 2008, she was named one of the “Brilliant 10 Scientists” by Popular Science and one of the “One Hundred Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era” by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
