Paula Hammond

Professor Paula T. Hammond is the David H. Koch Chair Professor of Engineering and the Department Head of the Chemical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Her research in nanotechnology encompasses the development of new biomaterials to enable drug delivery from surfaces with spatial and temporal control. She investigates novel responsive polymers for targeted nanoparticle drug and gene delivery. Professor Hammond was elected into the 2013 Class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also the recipient of the 2013 AIChE Charles M. A. Stine Award, which is bestowed annually to a leading researcher in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of materials science and engineering, the AIChE Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Research and the Department of Defense Ovarian Cancer Teal Innovator Award. Prof. Hammond serves as an Associate Editor of the American Chemical Society journal, ACS Nano. She was one of the Top 100 materials scientists named by Thomson-Reuters, and World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds in 2014. Professor Hammond’s work on multilayer tattoos for transdermal DNA vaccines was featured on the PBS Nova program, “Making Stuff” with David Pogue, and her work in cancer was most recently featured in a TED talk and PBS special; she was also featured in the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Catalyst Series: Women in Chemistry.