Meg Sobkowicz-Kline was born and raised in Massachusetts and attended Columbia University as an undergraduate, where she discovered her interest in human impacts on the planet through a summer course on ecology at the Biosphere II facility in southern Arizona. After college she worked as a field engineer in the petroleum industry and in the water treatment industry in New Mexico and Colorado before returning to school to complete her doctorate in Chemical Engineering at Colorado School of Mines. In 2010 she received a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship to study polymeric materials for photovoltaic applications at National Institute of Standards and Technology, and she joined UMass Lowell in 2011. Her research interests include renewable and degradable  polymers, plastics processing, rheology, green chemistry, polymer nanocomposites, functional coatings, plastics recycling, and climate change. She also advocates for increasing the participation and advancement of women in STEM careers through mentorship and social science and education research.