Christina M Tringides is a tenure-track assistant professor in Materials Science and NanoEngineering, and a core member of the Neuroengineering Initiative (NEI) at Rice, and joined July 2024. She earned her B.S. degrees in physics and in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2015, and spent one year as a Fulbright Scholar and Swiss Government Excellence Scholar at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne before starting her PhD in 2016. Her PhD work was done in the laboratory of Professor David Mooney (Harvard, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), and her degree came from Harvard Biophysics and the Medical Engineering Medical Physics program between Harvard and MIT in May 2022. Afterwards, Christina moved to ETH Zürich, where she was an ETH Postdoctoral Fellow, with Professor Janos Vörös (D-ITET, Institute of Biomedical Engineering). Her research focuses on developing new materials and neurotechnologies to interface with the nervous system, from the cell to organ levels, and for both in vivo and in vitro applications.
Research Areas
Soft materials, hydrogels, bioelectronics, neural engineering, in vitro platforms, implantable electrode arrays
Education
2022 PhD in Biophysics, Harvard University and Health Sciences and Technology (Harvard-MIT)
2015 B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2015 B.S. in Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Teaching Areas
Materials science
Soft materials and hydrogels
Bioelectronics
Societies & Organizations
Member, Materials Research Society
Member, American Chemical Society
Honors & Awards
2023: Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar (First-Time Tenure-Track Faculty Member)
2023: Women Interactive Materials Award (WIMA), laureate
2022: ETH Zürich, Postdoctoral Fellow
2022: Northwestern University, Future Leader in Materials Science
2021: Princeton University, Rising Stars in Biological Engineering
2017: National Science Foundation, Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
2016: Ashford Graduate Fellowship, Harvard University
2015: MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Outstanding Senior Thesis
2015: Fulbright Scholar