HARVARD
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center
 
 
 
Graduate Student

Sydney Gladman
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Sydney Gladman is a Ph.D. student at Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences with a focus in Materials Science and Engineering. Sydney began her academic career at the University of Florida where she earned her B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering in 2010. As an undergraduate Sydney was involved in numerous research endeavors including the development of a prototype for tubular biomedical devices coated with ant-fouling, shark-skin inspired topology, Sharklet™. She began her graduate education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Materials Science and Engineering Department working for Scott White and Nancy Sottos on a novel acrylic bone cement formulation capable of self-healing microscale cracks and damage. At UIUC Sydney was on the student board of the Materials Research Society and co-developed a weeklong materials science camp for high school girls called Girls Learning About Materials (G.L.A.M.). She transferred to Harvard University in 2012 with the members of Jennifer Lewis’s laboratory, where she now works on developing novel polymeric inks for 3D printing. Her research focuses specifically on formulating stimuli-responsive materials for 4D printing, inspired by the shape changing structures found in plants through a MRSEC collaboration with the Mahadevan group. These intricate shape-shifting structures may find use in numerous applications in soft robotics and actuators, transformable tissue engineering scaffolds, and soft bioelectronics.