Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Assistant Professor

Dr. Jeannine Coburn is the principal investigator of the Functional Biomaterials Lab and an Assistant Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institution in Massachusetts. She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2006 and doctoral degree in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University 2012 (NIH NRSA predoctoral fellow). Prior to joining WPI, she completed an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellowship at the Tufts University under the mentorship of Prof. David L. Kaplan. She joined the faculty at WPI in the summer of 2016 with a collaborative appointment in Chemical Engineering. She received the 2020 WPI Sigma Xi Outstanding Junior Faculty Award and the 2021 WPI Board of Trustees' Award for Outstanding Academic Advising. She is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2023).
Dr. Coburn has co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, one book chapter, four review articles, and is co-inventor on two patents. Her expertise is in the area of biomaterials with applications in drug delivery, tissue engineering, and disease modeling. Her current biomaterials of interest include silk fibroin, chondroitin sulfate, bacterial-derived cellulose, and other polysaccharides with research focused on in vitro solid tumor modeling, biomaterial surface and backbone modifications for functionality, oncology drug delivery, and neuroregeneration.