Dr. Maricela Maldonado

Dr. Maricela Maldonado joined the CSULB 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.