Moreau, Jennifer LynnCleft lip and/or palate are the most prevalent congenital craniofacial birth defect in humans. While myriad surgical techniques have been described to repair orofacial clefts, several complications have been associated with the repair techniques. To overcome these complications, a tissue engineering strategy may be employed. In particular, we are investigating strategies for regenerating the alveolar bone that is often missing as a result of cleft palates. Numerous materials have been explored as biomaterials for bone tissue engineering, however there are disadvantages to these, including compromised mechanical properties and harmful degradation products. To overcome this issue, a novel class of biomaterials has been created. These materials are crosslinked networks of monomers of 5-ethyl-5-(hydroxymethyl)-beta,beta-dimethyl-1,3-dioxane-2-ethanol diacrylate. The study presented here was designed to determine the effects of the material's formulation scheme on several of its physical properties, so as to develop a novel bone tissue engineering material suitable for cleft palate repair.en-USThesisEngineering, Chemicalbiomaterialstissue engineeringcleft palate