FIORENZO OMENETTO
Replacing Plastics with Silk
Learn more about Fiorenzo Omenetto
His research interests are at the interface of technology, biologically inspired materials and the natural sciences with an emphasis on new transformative approaches for sustainable materials for high-technology applications. He also serves as Dean for Research for the School of Engineering.
He has proposed and pioneered the use of silk as a material platform for advanced technology with uses in photonics, optoelectronics and nanotechnology applications, is co-inventor on several disclosures (~100) on the subject, and is actively investigating applications of this technology base both for technical and design applications. He is a co-founder of three startups and has active roles in their governance.
Prof. Omenetto was formerly a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratories, a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and of the American Physical Society and a Senior Member of SPIE. He was named one of the 50 top people in tech by Fortune magazine in a class including (among others) Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Shigeru Miyamoto. His research has been featured extensively in the press with coverage in the most important media outlets worldwide.