Dr. Joe Baio is an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering at Oregon State University. In the lab, Joe studies how materials function in the natural world to determine if principles from natural materials can be applied to solve important problems in medicine, biotechnology, engineering, and other fields. In particular, Joe is interested in understanding the characteristics and interactions on the surfaces of materials. Surfaces of interest range from cell membranes to artificial hips to sticky frog tongues. To clear his mind and get a break from the stresses of work, Joe enjoys cycling on local trails and going surfing on the nearby Oregon coast with his neighbor. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington. Afterwards, Joe was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research in the Department of Molecular Spectroscopy at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, in Mainz, Germany. He joined the faculty at Oregon State University in 2013. Joe was the recipient of the Dorothy M. and Earl S. Hoffman Scholarship from the AVS 58th International Symposium, the PhD Student Award for Outstanding Research from the Society for biomaterials, and the STAR Award from the Society for Biomaterials. In our interview, Joe shares more about his life and research.