Congratulations to Jennifer Lewis

Recipient of the James Prize in Science and Technology Integration

By Carole Mezian
April 25, 2025

Professor Jennifer Lewis is an NSF-MRSEC @ Harvard researcher who focuses on IRG 1 in the Center, has been selected to receive the 2025 James Prize in Science and Technology Integration from the National Academy of Sciences. This 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 (e.g., engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, geosciences, astronomy, or computational sciences) to solve a major contemporary challenge not addressable from a single disciplinary perspective.

She has developed the next generation of functional, structural, and living materials, enabling technological applications ranging from printed electronics to vascularized human tissues. By integrating multidisciplinary expertise in materials science, soft matter physics, additive manufacturing, bioengineering, and stem cell biology, Profesor Lewis has created new classes of printable materials, multi-material printheads, and methods of 3D printing and bioprinting.

Professor Lewis's 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.

Professor and Researcher Jennifer Lewis has co-authored hundreds of papers listed at Google Scholar Papers, which the papers have been cited more than ~67,000 times.

The ceremony will be livestreamed and held on Sunday, April 27, 2025 at 2:30pm, during the National Academy of Sciences' 162nd annual meeting where 20 individuals will be awarded and honored, and Professor Lewis will be awarded a $50,000 prize during the ceremony.

More about Jennifer Lewis

Jennifer Lewis, is a Hansjorg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering with the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Professor Lewis' Research areas include: Applied Mathematics; Applied Physics; Bioengineering; Electrical Engineering; Environmental Science and Engineering; Materials and Mechanical Engineering; and Science, Technology, Innovation, and Public Policy.

Jennifer Lewis is a materials scientist recognized for her work on directed assembly of functional, structural and biological materials. Lewis was born in Daytona Beach, Florida and grew up primarily in North Carolina, Ohio and Illinois. She attained her B.S. degrees in several areas including Physics, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science, but graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a degree in ceramic engineering and from MIT in 1991 with a Sc.D. in ceramic science. She joined the faculty at UIUC in 1990, where she served as Director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory from 2006-2012. She joined the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University in 2013, where she currently holds the title of Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering and serves as a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute. Her research resides at the intersection of materials science, advanced manufacturing, bioengineering and developmental biology.

Jennifer has made pioneering contributions to the programmable assembly of functional, structural, and living matter. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has co-founded four startups, and currently serves on multiple Scientific Advisory Boards.

Jennifer Lewis, Harvard University
Harvard's NSF-MRSEC IRG I: Programmable Multiscale and Multi-Material Control of Functional Soft Matter

At the Harvard MRSEC IRG I where Professor Lewis focuses her research, she has co-authored several papers affiliated with the NSF-MRSEC, including many papers listed with the Harvard MRSEC Publications 2020–2026.

Award: 2025 James Prize in Science and Technology Integration

About Award: It was established in 2020, and made possible through a generous donation from Robert "Bob" James, former Chairman & CEO of McCann Erickson Worldwide and former member and chair of the President's Circle at the National Academies. The prize was created to honor scientists who work across more than one domain and are often overlooked, since most prizes are field-specific. James believed "adapting ideas from other areas can inspire creative ways to solve problems, better, quicker, and cheaper."

Authorship, funding, disclosures

Jennifer Lewis's research was partly supported by the National Science Foundation through the Harvard University Materials Research Science and Engineering Center grant DMR-2011754.

Citations:

National Academy of Sciences

Google Scholar Papers

Lewis Lab