Sabrina C. Shen

Sabrina C. Shen is a PhD candidate whose research aims to support a more sustainable future through the computational and experimental design of nature-inspired architected materials. Sabrina’s current work, supported by a MathWorks Fellowship, proposes a new paradigm for materials design that uses pre-existing biomass waste streams to build a novel class of architected composites, drawing inspiration from nature and direction from powerful computational methods. By employing tools in bio-fabrication, computing, and theory, she aims to create functional materials that integrate into natural resource cycles in production, use, and disposal, even when scaled to industrial levels. MATLAB computational tools have been integral to her work, and she anticipates contributing open-source models and functions useful to other researchers working at the intersection of advanced experimental and computational methods. Sabrina’s research has exciting potential to advance work in many fields, from structural bio-composites to material design and manufacturing and to move the world toward a more sustainable future.