Kris Kilian received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemistry from the University of Washington in 1999 and 2003 respectively. He worked for Merck Research Labs in the Methods Development group from 2000-2004 before travelling to Sydney, Australia to do his PhD at the University of New South Wales. In 2007, Kris joined the laboratory of Milan Mrksich at the University of Chicago as a NIH postdoctoral fellow to investigate new methods for directing the differentiation of stem cells. He was Assistant Professor (2011-2017) and Associate Professor (2017-2018) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Department of Bioengineering, before returning to UNSW in 2018 as a Scientia Fellow between the School of Chemistry and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Kris is a recipient of the Cornforth Medal from the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (2008), the NIH Ruth L. Kirchstein National Research Service Award (2008), a Kavli Fellow of the 19th German-American Frontiers of Science (2014), the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award (2015), a Young Innovator of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (2017), the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2018), and the Dean's award for Excellence in Research (2020). Kris is currently Scientia Associate Professor, co-Director of the Australian Centre for NanoMedicine, Theme Lead of the Biomedical & Health Theme in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, and full member of the Adult Cancer Program. He is Associate Editor of Scientific Reports and the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research A. His research interests include the design and development of model extracellular matrices and dynamic hydrogels for biofabrication, cell engineering and fundamental studies in cell plasticity.