Melissa D. Krebs

Melissa received a B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rochester. She then worked at Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. in Cambridge, MA, focusing on applications in biodefense and medical diagnostics. She returned to graduate school to pursue a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH in the field of biomaterials and tissue regeneration and was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship to support her work. After graduating with her Ph.D., Melissa was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. She was awarded the TERMIS Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine Young Investigator Award. She also spent a year as a Visiting Scientist in Cancer Biology at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Melissa is now an Associate Professor in Chemical & Biological Engineering at Colorado School of Mines; she joined the department in August 2012. She is also a faculty member in the Charles Gates Center for Regenerative Medicine & Stem Cell Biology and is an Adjoint Associate Professor in Ophthalmology at University of Colorado School of Medicine. She was awarded a Boettcher Foundation Webb-Waring Early Career Investigator, received the Colorado School of Mines Inventor of the Year award in 2017, and in 2020 was awarded the Colorado School of Mines Faculty Excellence Award. Melissa is also CEO and Founder of a startup company GelSana Therapeutics, Inc.