Michele Marcolongo PhD

Michele Marcolongo serves as Senior Associate Vice Provost for Translational Research at Drexel University and is a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. She helps translate research discoveries from the laboratory to commercialization. She serves on the Operations Boards of the Nanotechnology Institute and the Energy Commercialization Institute. Michele’s field of research is biomaterials, i.e. materials that can be implanted into the body to replace diseased or damaged tissues. Specifically, she works on injectable biomaterials to replace and augment degenerated intervertebral discs, which are a primary cause of lower back pain.

Michele has co-founded two companies with technologies that treat lower back pain due to intervertebral disc degeneration. The first, Gelifex, was sold to a major orthopedics manufacturer and the technology is currently under commercialization. The second, SanoSpine, was recently incorporated to commercialize a platform technology of biomimetic proteoglycans.