Vanessa is a fashion-designer-turned-engineer working to make our clothing smarter and more assistive through focusing on the intersection of materials, manufacturing, and robotics. She attended The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) for fashion design and later graduated with a BS from the Fiber Science program at Cornell University. She obtained her PhD, supported by the DoD NDSEG Fellowship and the GEM Fellowship, at Harvard University in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering with a focus on soft robotic textiles as part of the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory. As an NSF MPS-Ascend Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University she conducted work on supramolecular shape memory polymer fibers. Her research has been featured in Vice, Wired, and Engadget and she has been named to the list of 50 Women in Robotics You Need to Know, recognized as an ACS CAS Future Leader, and selected for Forbes 30 Under 30.