Surya K. Mallapragada is the Stanley Chair in Interdisciplinary Engineering and is also fieldwork proposal leader for bioinspired materials at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory. A leader in the areas of smart polymers and neural tissue engineering, Mallapragada is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. MIT’s Technology Review named her one of the Top 100 Young Innovators in 2002. Mallapragada earned her BSChE at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and her PhD at Purdue University.