Affiliation: Saint Louis University

Dr. Zustiak obtained a BS/MS degree in Bioelectrical Engineering from the Technical University in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2002 and a PhD in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2009. She spent 3 years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland conducting postdoctoral research in biophysics. In 2011, she received the NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence for her work on transport in complex media. Dr. Zustiak joined the Biomedical Engineering Department at Saint Louis University (SLU) in January 2013. At SLU she was awarded the Outstanding Parks Graduate Faculty Award in 2015 and the SLU Scholarly Works Award for a Junior Faculty in 2017. She is a Co-Director for the Institute of Drug and Biotherapeutic Innovation and on the Executive Leadership Committee for the Henry and Amelia Nasrallah Center for Neuroscience at SLU.  Dr. Zustiak is a frequent reviewer for the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, multiple scientific journals and is on the Editorial board for Frontiers in Biotechnology and Bioengineering and Pharmaceuticals journals.

Dr. Zustiak’s research is highly multidisciplinary, merging the fields of engineering, materials science, biophysics, and biology. Her research is focused on hydrogel biomaterials and tissue engineering, with emphasis on developing novel biomaterials as drug screening platforms and delivery devices for biologics, elucidating matrix structure-property relationships as well as cell-matrix interactions. Her work has resulted in over 50 peer-reviewed publications, over 200 presentations at regional and national conferences and multiple patent applications.