How small is nano? Using materials smaller than the diameter of a human hair, Julia offers a futuristic peek into the surprisingly strong world of nano building materials.

Julia Greer likes small stuff, really really small stuff. Greer creates 3-dimensional nano-architectures and designs experiments to assess their properties. These “meta-materials” have multiple applications, for example, as biomedical devices, battery electrodes, and lightweight structural materials. They provide a rich “playground” for fundamental scientific pursuits.

After graduating with an S.B. in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Advanced Music Performance from MIT in 1997, Greer studied at Stanford and received her Ph.D. in Materials Science. She worked at Intel and was a post-doc at PARC before joining the faculty of Caltech in 2007, where she has appointments in Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Medical Engineering.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx