The ability of an artificial surface to resist the non-specific adsorption of proteins in biological solutions greatly improves its biocompatibility---a desirable property to overcome many problems across the biomedical and biochemical processing areas. This thesis demonstrates the effectiveness of surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization for the synthesis of hydrophilic, protein resistant coatings with controlled thicknesses in the nanoscale regime (1--100 nm). The strategy uses the surface initiated atom transfer radical polymerization of commercially available oligo(ethylene glycol) methacrylate monomers with different chain lengths and either hydroxyl or methoxy group terminations. This thesis evaluated the effects of chain length and end group of the monomers on the kinetics of their polymerization and the protein resistance of the resulting films. Protein adsorption for plasma proteins (lysozyme, fibrinogen, and albumin) as measured by XPS shows that, these coatings show remarkable resistance against protein adsorption that depends on the attributes of the monomer.