3-D printing pioneer Jennifer Lewis named among ‘Leading Global Thinkers’

Harvard materials scientist Jennifer A. Lewis, whose pioneering work in the field of microscale 3D printing is advancing the development of artificial organs, flexible electronics, and special new materials, has been named among Foreign Policy magazine’s “100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2014.”

Lewis, the Hansjorg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, was honored among innovators “for showing how ink could reshape the future.”

“With her team at Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Lewis has printed materials that mimic the lightweight strength of balsa wood for potential use in wind turbines and batteries that could streamline the assembly of small electronics,” the Foreign Policy editors wrote. “In February, her team reported that it had printed cellular tissue constructs with embedded blood vessels—a step toward the manufacture of artificial organs.”

“Lewis’s work shows that 3D printing won’t just change how people make things,” they wrote. “It will also change what, exactly, people can make.”