Jennifer Lewis
Jennifer A. Lewis (born 1965) is an American materials scientist and engineer, best known for her work on the directed assembly of soft materials and the 3D printing of functional materials including electronics.[1]
Education and early career
Lewis graduated from the University of Illinois with honors in ceramic engineering in 1986 and earned an Sc.D. in ceramic science from MIT in 1991 under the direction of Michael J. Cima. From 1991 to 1997 she was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and was also affiliated with the Beckman Institute[1][2]
Recent career
Promoted to associate professor in 1997 and to professor in 2003, Lewis became in 2007 director of UIUC's Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory. In 2013 she moved to Harvard University as Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.[1]
Research
Lewis' laboratory works on the directed assembly of soft functional materials. This work involves microfluidics, materials synthesis, complex fluids, and robotic assembly to design functional materials. She develops novel materials that can find potential application as printed electronics, waveguides, and 3D scaffolds and microvascular architectures for cell culture and tissue engineering.[1] Lewis is the author of more than 120 papers and holds 8 patents. She is a founder of Voxel8, a company that manufactures a 3D printing platform capable of printing new functional materials, whose investors include In-Q-Tel.[3]
Awards and honors
Lewis is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has received the NSF Presidential Faculty Fellow Award (1994), the Schlumberger Foundation Award (1995), the Brunauer Award from the American Ceramic Society (2003), the Materials Research Society Medal (2012), and the Langmuir Lecture award from the American Chemical Society (2009).[2]