National Academy of Sciences award honors pioneering interdisciplinary research
By SEAS Communications
(CAMBRIDGE) — Jennifer Lewis, Sc.D., Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and co-lead of the Wyss’ 3D Organ Engineering Initiative has been awarded the 2025 James Prize in Science and Technology Integration by the National Academy of Sciences.
Lewis is also the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).
The prize honors, “outstanding contributions made by researchers who are able to adopt or adapt information or techniques from outside their fields, and thus integrate knowledge from two or more disciplines to solve a major contemporary challenge not addressable from a single disciplinary perspective.”
Lewis has developed the next generation of functional, structural, and living materials, enabling applications ranging from printed electronics to vascularized human tissues. In her research, Lewis has integrated multidisciplinary expertise in materials science, soft matter physics, additive manufacturing, bioengineering, and stem cell biology to create new classes of printable materials, multimaterial printheads, and methods of 3D printing and bioprinting.
Lewis’ work includes creating electrically and ionically conductive inks for printing electronic devices and lithium-ion batteries at the microscale. She is also using human stem cell-derived organoids to build perfusable 3D organ-on-chip models and vascularized tissues for drug screening, disease modeling, and therapeutic use. Her team is also developing ReConstruct, a technology platform that enables the creation of vascularized tissue for breast reconstruction and augmentation following mastectomies.
Lewis will be honored in a ceremony on Sunday, April 27 during the National Academy of Sciences’ 162nd annual meeting. The James Prize in Science and Technology Integration is presented annually and carries with it a $50,000 prize.
Lewis earned a Sc.D. in Ceramic Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among her many honors, she received the NSF Presidential Faculty Fellow Award, the Brunauer and Sosman Awards from the American Ceramic Society, the Langmuir Lecture Award from the American Chemical Society, the Materials Research Society Medal, and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1/9 Confocal microscopy image showing a cross-section of a 3D-printed, 1-centimeter-thick vascularized tissue construct showing stem cell differentiation towards development of bone cells, following one month of active perfusion of fluids, nutrients, and cell growth factors. The structure was fabricated using a novel 3D bioprinting strategy invented by Jennifer Lewis and her team at the Wyss Institute and Harvard SEAS. Credit: Lewis Lab, Wyss Institute at Harvard University 
2/9 The Lewis Lab’s 3D bioprinting mechanism uses a special polymer “ink” (pink) to print organ-imitating tissues that can be used for in vitro toxicology studies. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University 
3/9 A complete hybrid 3D-printed device flexes and conforms to the body’s shape. Credit: Alex Valentine, Lori K. Sanders, and Jennifer Lewis / Harvard University 
4/9 A complete hybrid 3D-printed device flexes and conforms to the body’s shape. Credit: Alex Valentine, Lori K. Sanders, and Jennifer Lewis / Harvard University 
5/9 To eject droplets, acoustophoretic printing utilizes airborne ultrasounds - virtually material independent. Even liquid metal can be easily printed! Credits: Daniele Foresti, Jennifer Lewis / Harvard University 
6/9 The octobot, an entirely soft robot, is powered without electronics; instead microfluidic channels containing chemical reactions automate its movements. Credit: Lori Sanders, Ryan Truby, Michael Wehner, Robert Wood, and Jennifer Lewis 
7/9 Hemispherical-Spiral- laser-assisted method developed by Wyss Core Faculty member Jennifer Lewis that allows metal to be 3D printed in midair. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University 
8/9 This image shows the interlaced stack of electrodes that were printed layer by layer to create the working anode and cathode of a microbattery. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University 
9/9 From left to right: Rushdy Ahmad, Head of the Wyss Diagnostics Accelerator, Daniel Cramer, Director of the OB/GYN Epidemiology Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Ellen Roche, Wyss Associate Faculty member, Jennifer Lewis, Wyss Core Faculty member, and Christopher Chen, Wyss Core Faculty member. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University