Chelsea Bahney, PhD

Chief Executive Officer | Regenerative Medicine Scientist

Dr. Chelsea Bahney is CEO and Co-Founder of Hydronovo, where she leads the company's strategy and translational development to advance regenerative therapies from the laboratory to the clinic. She is also Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she directs the Laboratory of Regenerative Therapeutics and develops biomaterial-based technologies that harness the body's natural regenerative capacity.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Bahney has built a career advancing regenerative technologies through the integration of engineering, biomaterials, and developmental biology. She has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications, is an inventor on approximately 20 patents and patent applications, and has secured sustained funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to accelerate regenerative medicine toward patient care.

At Hydronovo, Dr. Bahney is leading the company's therapeutic platform through IND-enabling development and toward first-in-human clinical studies. She oversees commercialization strategy and execution, including manufacturing scale-up, regulatory development, and achievement of key translational milestones.

Before joining academia, Dr. Bahney spent five years as an R&D Engineer at Medtronic, where she helped develop and commercialize multiple medical technologies and became an inventor on several medical device patents. This unique combination of engineering, scientific innovation, and product development continues to guide Hydronovo's mission to bring transformative regenerative therapies to patients.