Materials scientist honored for pioneering research
By Leah Burrows, SEAS Communications
Jennifer Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering, at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and a Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering was inducted into The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on April 27, 2019.
Lewis was among 84 new members and 21 foreign associates honored for their “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research” at Saturday’s annual NAS meeting.
Lewis was one of six new members—one from each Academy Class—invited to present their research during the meeting.
Lewis’ research focuses on the digital design and assembly of functional, structural and biological materials. Her pioneering work on printing soft matter in three dimensions is advancing the development of flexible electronics, soft robotics, lightweight architectures, and vascularized human tissues. Lewis’ multi-material printing platform enables programmable control over the composition, structure and properties of soft and living matter over multiple scales. Lewis also is the co-leader of the Wyss Institute’s 3D Organ Engineering Initiative.
Lewis earned an 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 also an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has co-founded two companies, Electroninks, Inc. and Voxel8, Inc., that are translating advances in printable materials and methods from her lab.