Kara McCloskey

Kara E. McCloskey, PhD, is a Founding Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of California, Merced (UCM). She received her BS and an MS in Chemical Engineering from the Ohio State University and her PhD through a joint Biomedical Engineering Program with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and the Ohio State University. Her doctoral studies examined the magnetic separation of stem cells from cancer patients’ apheresis products for potentially faster cancer cell-free reconstitution of the immune system after chemotherapy. Her postdoctoral training focused on vascular stem cell and tissue engineering with Dr. Robert Nerem at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In her faculty position, Dr. McCloskey was the founder and first chair of the Biological Engineering and Small-scale Technologies (BEST) graduate program at UC, Merced and served as the university liaison for the UC Systemwide Bioengineering Multi-campus Research Unit for over 10 years. Her research is in the field of cardiovascular tissue engineering with a specific focus on deriving and characterizing functional cell products from stem cells. As a young investigator, Dr. McCloskey earned a New Faculty Award II from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) for studies towards developing cardiac tissue from stem cells followed by a Basic Biology Award from CIRM to study “Directing Endothelial Sub-phenotypes from Embryonic Stem Cells” and is currently directing a new CIRM-funded Stem Cell Training Program at UCM. She has become most recognized for her work in endothelial cell (EC) fate, including tip-specific ECs emerging from stem cells. She has co-authored ~50 articles on vascular and cardiovascular stem cell differentiation, cell characterization, magnetic cell separation, and integrating stem cell-derived products with biomaterials for developing functional tissue platforms.