As a ninth grader in Chanhassen, Minnesota, outside of Minneapolis, Monica Ohnsorg took an aptitude exam that pointed her toward a career as a biomedical engineer.
Now, nearly two decades later, she’s starting her career as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Proving that winding educational journeys often produce uniquely qualified interdisciplinary scientists, Ohnsorg did not actually pursue a formal degree in biomedical engineering. But her studies and experience in adjacent fields—chemistry, chemical and biological engineering, and materials science—have positioned her well to pursue research and teaching at the intersection of polymer science and tissue engineering.
“I see myself bridging these two fields,” says Ohnsorg, who joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering in January 2026. “At UW-Madison, I’m being given the opportunity to be the expert in polymer chemistry amongst so many experts in biology. And, as a result, I can be infinitely collaborative with so many people.”
Specifically, Ohnsorg develops synthetic polymer materials that mimic the mechanical and biochemical properties of human tissues, allowing researchers to study disease progression and assess treatments under more physiologically relevant conditions. In particular, she’s interested in applying her materials to musculoskeletal diseases like osteoarthritis and osteoporosis.
Ohnsorg can trace her interest in science back to her grandfather, who taught the subject at the high school level in Richfield, Minnesota, and gifted her his teacher’s edition chemistry textbook when she was in eighth grade.
She planned to follow the aptitude test’s guidance as an undergraduate student at Hope College in Michigan, but her strong interests in nanoparticle drug delivery led her to a professor conducting nano-scale materials research in the Department of Chemistry. As a result, she instead wound up majoring in chemistry with a minor in engineering while working all four years in that research lab.
“It was very fundamental research, but that’s where I learned how to ask scientific questions and to really have independence in the lab,” she says.
After graduating, she boomeranged back home to pursue her PhD in chemistry at the University of Minnesota under dual advisement of chemist Theresa Reineke and chemical engineer Frank Bates. It was a five-year deep dive into polymers—specifically “bottlebrush” polymers, useful molecules named for their appearance, with many chains attached to a central backbone.
She brought that knowledge with her to the University of Colorado Boulder, where she spent nearly four years as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Kristi Anseth, a decorated professor of chemical and biological engineering who works in tissue engineering. Ohnsorg began making hydrogels out of bottlebrush polymers, creating materials that more closely mirror human tissues’ mechanical properties than many of the existing options for culturing cells in three dimensions.
“Where are the current materials in biomedical engineering and in vitro models for three-dimensional cell culture letting us down?” says Ohnsorg, who applied the technique to create synthetic materials that copy aspects of core components of cartilage, like collagen. “And how can we as polymer scientists and engineers come in and build novel materials that are informed by how our bodies behave, so we can best study and mimic different cell niches in the body?”
At UW-Madison, Ohnsorg envisions collaborations with tissue engineering researchers and biomedical engineering colleagues like William Murphy and Wan-Ju Li, as well as biomechanics researchers such as Corinne Henak in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She is also excited to join a resurgent polymer science ecosystem on campus, including recent faculty arrivals like Whitney Loo in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and several engineering affiliates in the Department of Chemistry.
Drawing upon her research, Ohnsorg hopes to develop a course for undergraduates on polymers in medicine.
“I have high expectations for my students to reach learning goals,” she says, “but also, I want to be someone who always has my door open for office hours and deep questions about what we’re learning.”