Kara Hageman

Kara Hageman is a 2020-2024 Self Graduate Fellow pursuing a Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Kansas. She earned a BS (2018) in Biomedical Engineering with a focus in biomaterials and minors in chemistry, polymer science, and engineering from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, OH. Her lab research at CWRU explored drug delivery with synthetic platelets. In addition, she was a research intern at Haima Therapeutics where she developed and characterized nanoparticles intended to mimic platelets. Kara was a four-year varsity athlete and two-year President’s Council Scholar-Athlete for the UAA women’s basketball conference. Following her undergraduate studies, she earned both a Master’s of Public Health and a Master’s of Bioethics and Medical Humanities (2020) from CWRU. For her PhD, she hopes to apply her expertise in biomaterials to advance biomechanical approaches to injury rehabilitation and prevention of chronic diseases. Upon graduating, she hopes to bridge the gap between public health and engineering as it relates to the accessibility of life-saving technologies to individuals, nationally and globally, through advances in scientific policy.