Christopher Siedlecki, Ph.D.

Dr. Christopher A. Siedlecki is currently an Associate Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Bioengineering at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, PA. Dr. Siedlecki also holds an appointment in the College of Engineering at University Park PA and is a member of the Materials Research Institute at Penn State.

Dr. Siedlecki received a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1991. Dr. Siedlecki then went on to conduct graduate work in the laboratory of Dr. Roger Marchant at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he conducted research on development of novel techniques for high-resolution probe microscopy studies of blood proteins. While at Case, he received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1994 and 1996, respectively, both in Biomedical Engineering. After a brief period of postdoctoral work at CWRU, Dr. Siedlecki accepted an Academic Fellow appointment as a joint industry/academic postdoctoral researcher with Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. During this time, Dr. Siedlecki used an array of microscopy and spectroscopy techniques to study the mechanisms of aggregation of insulin.

Dr. Siedlecki joined the faculty of the Departments of Surgery and Bioengineering at the Pennsylvania State University in 1999. While at Penn State, he has established a laboratory to study cardiovascular biomaterials using both basic science and applied research, focusing primarily on the issues of coagulation and thrombosis in response to blood-material contact, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005. Dr. Siedlecki's major research areas include mechanisms of biomaterial-induced blood coagulation, development and testing of medical devices including ventricular assist devices and artificial hearts, biocompatibility of polyurethane biomaterials and applications of nanotechnology to cardiovascular biomaterials. His interests in proteins and cells at surfaces have led to collaborations in the areas of orthopaedic biomaterials, regenerative medicine and drug delivery for cancer imaging and therapies.

Currently, Dr. Siedlecki is funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the Johnson and Johnson/PSU innovative technology program and the State of Pennsylvania Department of Health. He has previously received funding from the American Heart Association and the Life Sciences Greenhouse of Central Pennsylvania Technology Development Fund. Dr. Siedlecki has served as an ad-hoc reviewer for NIH study sections in the areas of hematology and technology development and is a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research A.