Kristy M. Ainslie


Kristy M. Ainslie is a pharmaceutical science professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the
Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She is also joint in the UNC School of Medicine Department of Microbiology and Immunology and affiliated faculty in the UNC/NC State joint Biomedical Engineering department. Additionally, she is part of UNC's Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program.

Background

Ainslie completed her Bachelors of Science in Chemical engineering from Michigan State University in 1999. After working as an environmental engineer at Malcolm Pirnie, she began graduate school at Penn State as a fellow in the Huck Institutes of the Life Science. In 2003, she completed her Masters of Science in Chemical engineering under John Tarbell, focusing on shear stress modulation of vascular smooth muscle cell contraction. Two years later in 2005, she completed her PhD in Chemical engineering under Micheal Pishko, focusing on protein adhesion and cell responses to nanomaterials. After a brief post doc at the microcantilever start-up Protiveris, she worked with Lloyd Whitman at the United States Naval Research Laboratory. In 2006, she began a post doc at University of San Francisco in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences under the direction of Tejal Desai. The focus of Ainslie's research at UCSF was on microfabricated oral drug delivery carriers and immune responses to planar nanomaterials.
Ainslie began her career as a tenure track Assistant Professor at Ohio State University in the School of Pharmacy in the Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry. In 2014, Ainslie moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics as an Associate Professor.

Career

Ainslie has several areas of focus for her lab: