Most of us have probably fallen prey to going down a rabbit hole of scrolling through skincare tips on Instagram or buying the next trendy product that promises to instantly clear acne. But what if the biggest skincare guru isn’t any influencer at all, but a creature that has been swimming around for over 400 million years, uses zero products, and also happens to be one of the most feared predators in the sea: sharks. The Properties & Advantages of Shark Skin What I mean by s

[Update 2/1]: Hi everyone! Thank you for being patient! After some careful planning and reaching out to interviewees, I can confirm our first episode will come out in the next week or so! Stay tuned :) Nature's Blueprints is excited to introduce an upcoming series called Get (Bio)Inspired! This series will feature spotlights and personal questions with professors who specialize in bioinspiration, sharing their experiences, projects, and the lessons they have learned along th

Author’s note: Hi everyone,  I’m very excited and proud to share my latest blog post, which draws from the research I conducted this summer at the Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics (CLUE) and from my paper submitted to the Regeneron Science Talent Search. This summer, I had the privilege to work at Columbia University, where my supervisor, Dr. Ioannis Kymissis, introduced me to a central challenge in modern cancer treatment: radiation therapy. As a key modali

When asked to think of the typical robot, you probably imagine a clunky BB-8-type of android made of metal. Or, if you are more familiar...

A quick note from the author: As someone who has been fortunate enough to work with a close female lab mentor (shoutout to Fariha!), I am...

In my blog, we talk a lot about what it means to be bioinspired and its important new developments. But today, I want to zoom out a little bit to an overarching concept of sustainability that helps to govern and inform developments in chemical and bioinspired engineering: Green Chemistry. This post will look at the birth of Green Chemistry, explain what it means, and explore how Green Chemistry and bioinspiration are interrelated. 

On May 7th, I had the pleasure of taking a trip to Cambridge and being a co-presenter at this year's MIT Polymer Day! Polymer Day, which is hosted by active members of the Polymer Graduate Student Association (PGSA), is a one-day poster fair/conference that spotlights researchers from a variety of institutions who are pioneering polymer and soft matter research. I had the honor of accompanying and co-presenting the research I do at the City College of New York on bioinspired

If we are going by clichés, science and fashion don’t typically go hand in hand. But as a high school girl interested in science research and, truthfully, also curating my ideal wardrobe, I can attest to the contrary. While I’m not suggesting that lab coats should become the next trend, the fashion industry has, interestingly enough, become tangled up in materials science and development to reach sustainability goals. The global fashion market is responsible for around ⅕ of t

When we think of microscopes, we often picture the run-of-the-mill compound microscopes that live in your high school chemistry teacher’s lab. While perfectly capable of analyzing 2D plant cells in biology class, traditional light microscopes can only go so far in the world of cutting-edge research and nanotechnology. In order to analyze samples at the nanometer scale—far beyond the capabilities of what the naked eye or visible light can see—Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)

Plastic is ever-present all around us, and much of it is visible in our everyday lives (like plastic water bottles, bags, toys, etc)....

Cement is the glue of our society: we need it to construct buildings and critical infrastructure in cities and towns. Cement is mixed...

This blog is adapted from a research paper submitted to the Toshiba Exploravision Competition 2023 and International Journal of High...

Have a look at our open-access article on lithium-ion battery manufacturing and the exploration of bioinspired alternatives! The article...

Plastic is incredibly versatile–it’s lightweight, durable, and cheap to produce. It’s no wonder that it has become one of the most...

Our lives are filled with materials. They make up everything from the things that we use, the clothes we wear, to the infrastructure of...