Erika I. Palmer , PhD

Fellow
Stanford Biodesign Program
Stanford , CA

Barlow Innovation Fellow, 2008-09
Erika Palmer received her B.S. degree in Bioengineering from the University of California San Diego, graduating Cum Laude in 1997. During her undergraduate education, she pursued research in cartilage tissue engineering, developing an imaging technique to quantify cartilage degeneration in an osteoarthritic animal model. She then went on to pursue her M.S. at the University of California, Berkeley and her Ph.D. at the joint program for Bioengineering at the Universities of California at Berkeley and San Francisco. Her thesis work focused on the mechanical mechanisms of intervertebral disc degeneration. To this end, Erika utilized an animal model of disc degeneration to correlate tissue mechanics with molecular and cellular changes, which occur during the degenerative cascade.
Following completion of her graduate work, she joined Kyphon Inc. as a scientist, contributing to the research and development of a nucleus replacement procedure. Erika now manages an R&D team at Kyphon, focused on the design and development of novel diagnostics and therapeutics for the treatment of intervertebral disc disease.