The focus of this thesis is to design a biomaterial coating with optimal surface chemistry and mechanical properties to reduce inflammatory or immune response to implanted foreign materials. Tunable hydrogel biomaterial coatings were synthesized and characterized to allow for controlled surface chemistry and mechanical properties;​ the two coatings designed in this work represent biomaterial coatings that could be applied to a variety of implant surfaces in order to reduce overall immune response. Specifically, I tested the hypothesis that macrophages will show reduced attachment and activation on materials with lower moduli surfaces. The lower moduli coatings for both surface chemistries attached fewer macrophages, indicating a decrease in the chronic inflammatory response. The cells that attached to lower moduli surfaces produced more TNF-α, a pro-inflammatory cytokine, but the amount of global TNF-α released remained unchanged for all coatings. However, in the case of IL-8, another pro-inflammatory cytokine, there was a decrease in the amount of IL-8 released with decreasing modulus of the coating in both the global and normalized data sets. Overall, lower macrophage attachment and a decrease in IL-8 expression indicated a lesser inflammatory response for lower moduli surfaces, supporting my hypothesis.