Marissa E. Wechsler

Marissa E. Wechsler, Ph.D. serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design. Her research program centers on engineering environmentally responsive polymeric materials to MEND (Materials Engineering, Nanotechnology, and Drug delivery) chronic diseases through innovative biomaterials solutions.

Her work spans three interconnected domains:

• Biosensing: Developing hydrogel-coated nanoshells and hybrid metallic hydrogel nanoparticles for protein detection in biological fluids, with emphasis on geometry effects and binding dynamics
• Drug Delivery: Engineering microparticles for vascular tissue engineering, synthetic polymers for reactive oxygen species scavenging, and hybrid nanoparticles for blood-brain barrier transport
• Disease Microenvironment Modeling: Creating hydrogels to modulate mesenchymal stem/stromal cell (MSC) secretome for cell-based therapies in osteoporosis, diabetes, and other chronic conditions

Dr. Wechsler actively recruits students and trainees to her laboratory (AET 1.212), emphasizing translational research to advance treatments for chronic diseases through biomaterials innovation.