Rate My Professor Kristyn Masters

Kristyn Masters, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Bioengineering in the College of Engineering, Design and Computing at the University of Colorado Denver, positions she assumed in 2023. She also directs the Center for Bioengineering at the Anschutz Medical Campus. Previously, Masters was a faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2004 until her move to CU Denver. She earned her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Rice University in 2002, with a dissertation titled "Pharmacologically active materials for localized nitric oxide therapy," and her BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Masters specializes in biomaterials and tissue engineering. Her research develops engineered disease models to study extracellular matrix dynamics, cell adhesion, migration, and sex differences in pathogenesis, particularly for aortic valve disease, ovarian cancer, wound healing, and valvular interstitial cell function. Active projects include models of age-related aortic valve changes, ECM-mimetic constructs regulating ovarian cancer adhesion via fibronectin and transglutaminase 2, collagen fiber density in metastatic ovarian cancer, and sex-accurate culture environments. Key publications feature "Calcific aortic valve disease: not simply a degenerative process—a review and agenda for research from the national heart and lung and blood institute aortic stenosis working group" (2011; 1,125 citations), "Photocrosslinkable polyvinyl alcohol hydrogels that can be modified with cell adhesion peptides for use in tissue engineering" (2002; 813 citations), "Valvular myofibroblast activation by transforming growth factor-β: implications for pathological extracellular matrix remodeling in heart valve disease" (2004; 559 citations), "Crosslinked hyaluronan scaffolds as a biologically active carrier for valvular interstitial cells" (2005; 324 citations), and recent works such as "Developing sex-accurate cell culture environments" (2025) and "Fibronectin composition and transglutaminase 2 cross-linking cooperatively regulate ovarian cancer cell adhesion in ECM-mimetic constructs" (2025). With over 6,300 citations, she has earned the 2018 American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellowship, 2016 H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, and 2008 teaching awards from the American Society for Engineering Education and University of Wisconsin-Madison.