The development of effective tissue engineering materials requires careful consideration of several properties beyond biocompatibility, including permeability and mechanical stiffness. While surfactant templating has been used for over a decade to control the physical properties of photo polymer materials, the potential benefit of this technique with regard to biomaterials has yet to be fully explored. Herein we demonstrate that surfactant templating can be used to tune the water uptake and compressive modulus of photo-cross-linked chitosan hydrogels. Interestingly, templating with quaternary ammonium surfactants also hedges against property fluctuations that occur with changing pH. Further, we demonstrate that, after adequate surfactant removal, these materials are nontoxic, support the attachment of induced pluripotent stem cells and facilitate stem cell differentiation to neuronal phenotypes. These results demonstrate the utility of surfactant templating for optimizing the properties of biomaterials intended for a variety of applications, including retinal regeneration.