Dr. Kristen Cardinal

Kristen O’Halloran Cardinal completed a B.S. in General Engineering with a Biomedical Engineering concentration at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2003. While a student at Cal Poly, she was also a member of the NCAA Division 1 women’s volleyball team.  She then earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering in 2007 from the University of Arizona. Her research endeavors focused on tissue engineered blood vessels and intravascular device evaluation, and her early industrial collaborations included several medical device companies, including Abbott Vascular where she spent time in the Preclinical Research group.

Professor Cardinal has been a faculty member at Cal Poly since 2007.  She has an active research lab, where she works with undergraduate and master’s students to create and utilize tissue engineered blood vessels for testing vascular devices, ranging from stents to flow diverters.  She has also collaborated with industry partners on device development in the cell therapy field.  Her lab performs mammalian cell culture, electrospinning, in vitro system design, and microscopy, and she has collaborated with numerous medical device and cell therapy companies including Stryker Neurovascular, Medtronic, Edwards Lifesciences, Meissner Filtration, Cellular Vehicles, and others.  Professor Cardinal has led CIRM-funded training in regenerative medicine at both the undergraduate and Master's level at Cal Poly since 2009.  She also runs the Cal Poly MEDITEC program and teaches courses in Tissue Engineering, Biomaterials, Medical Device Evaluation and the FDA Approval Process, and Regenerative Medicine Product Development.