Vivian spent her PhD developing conductive polymer hydrogels that can effectively interface with the body’s cells and offer the opportunity to realize the potential of electronics in medicine. Her work could be used in many applications from advanced prosthetics to regenerative medicine.
As a Schmidt Science Fellow, Vivian is working in the Langer Lab at MIT, where she will pivot her science to applying metals to biomedical challenges. Specifically, she plans to develop stimuli-responsive metals, which undergo dramatic changes in mechanical properties when exposed to physical or chemical triggers, to use within diverse biomedical applications where a combination of durability, adaptability, and transience is needed.
Vivian hopes that her work can make biomedical technologies more broadly accessible by reducing the burden on patients to adhere to treatments and eliminating the need for invasive interventions to respond to complications.