'Can we make tissues that are made from you, for you'' asked Jennifer Lewis ScD '91 at the 2025 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture, organized by MIT.nano, on Nov. 3. 'The grand challenge goal is to create these tissues for therapeutic use and, ultimately, at the whole organ scale.' Lewis, the Hansjorg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, is pursuing that challenge through advances in 3D printing. In her talk presented to a combined in-person and virtual audience of over 500 attendees, Lewis shared work from her lab that focuses on enhanced function in 3D printed components for use in soft electronics, robotics, and life sciences. 'How you make a material affects its structure, and it affects its properties,' said Lewis. 'This perspective was a light bulb moment for me, to think about 3D printing beyond just prototyping and making shapes, but really being able to control local composition, structure, and properties across multiple scales.' A trained...
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