Dr. Steinkruger earned a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2006. During his undergraduate tenure he completed independent research under Prof. Jody Redepenning synthesizing composite materials for use as hard tissue replacements. Dr. Steinkruger also served as a National Science Foundation-Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) fellow at Columbia University under Prof. Koji Nakanishi. Dr. Steinkruger went on to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012. His graduate research was completed in the laboratory of Prof. Samuel H. Gellman and focused on the use of reversible thiol-thioester exchange reactions to probe sequence-stability relationships in small folded polypeptides. Dr. Steinkruger began his independent career at UCM in the fall of 2012. His undergraduate research program focuses on interdisciplinary projects at the interface of chemistry and biology.