Jonathan McKinley

Jonathan is a 3rd year PhD student in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley. Jonathan stayed at UC Berkeley for graduate studies after falling in love with the vibrant and driven multicultural student body located on Berkeley’s extraordinary campus. His research develops a bending Disc-on-a-chip where subunits of an intervertebral disc can be created outside of the body. Jonathan helped develop the Fung Institute while teaching Masters of Engineering students over the last five semesters. He continues to teach at the Fung Institute which helps fund his studies. In his spare time, Jonathan coaches/mentors over 100 student-triathletes of that vibrant UC Berkeley student body. In addition to coaching, Jonathan races triathlons and duathlons globally for both UC Berkeley and TeamUSA. Jonathan’s research is inspired by his athletics when believing that biomechanical work in improving human healthspan for all ages can be inspired by elite athletics where the human body improves by adapting to extraordinary physical demands.