Sarah Heilshorn | Faculty Spotlight
Sarah Heilshorn
Director, Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM)
Rickey/Nielsen Professor in the School of Engineering and
Professor, by Courtesy, of Bioengineering and of Chemical Engineering
"Throughout my graduate studies, I really enjoyed teaching and mentoring other students. I also found that I always had more research ideas than time to pursue them all."
Where were you born and raised?
I was born and raised in a rural community in Defiance, Ohio. While I attended a very small high school that did not offer any advanced courses, I was fortunate to have teachers that were dedicated to their students and parents that encouraged me to have big dreams. In particular, my German language teacher suggested that I could apply for a fellowship to be a foreign exchange student. I earned an award that was jointly funded through the US Congress and the German Bundestag to study in Germany for my junior year of high school, which was an amazing experience. Having the opportunity to learn a new language and culture while living with a supportive host family helped me to see a wider world of possibilities and career choices.
What led you to the engineering field?
As the first in my immediate family to attend college, I was initially attracted to engineering because of the job stability that it promised; however, I soon realized that I really enjoyed my courses! I had always participated in visual arts and performing arts growing up, and I was excited to find that engineering offered me yet another way to explore my creativity. I was especially drawn to the idea of an engineer as a problem-solver who could improve the lives of others.
Where did you study?
My undergraduate degree is from Georgia Tech, where I learned to be a “helluva engineer.” I was a co-op student throughout my undergrad studies, working as an intern to put my new engineering skills into practice. While interning at an industrial R&D center, I caught the research bug. Looking around the lab, I saw that all of the most interesting jobs were held by people with a PhD. This experience pushed me to attend graduate school at Caltech, where I studied with Prof. David Tirrell to explore new ways to design materials using protein engineering. After my PhD, I wanted to learn more about how these new materials could be used for medicine, so I studied neurobiology with Prof. Mu-ming Poo at UC Berkeley as a postdoctoral scholar.
What led you to Stanford and your current role?
Throughout my graduate studies, I really enjoyed teaching and mentoring other students. I also found that I always had more research ideas than time to pursue them all. Together, these two facts made a faculty career a great choice for me. I love teaching and leading a research team at Stanford, because I am constantly being exposed to exciting, new ideas through conversations with my colleagues and students. The Stanford culture embraces collaborative and creative problem-solving in a truly interdisciplinary way.
Please describe any of your current research you would like highlighted and describe its importance, and/or any research you hope to accomplish in the future.
In one of our projects, we are developing a therapy to induce tissue regeneration following spinal cord injury. While many studies have shown that transplanted cells can be beneficial in some cases, most of the transplanted cells do not survive when they are introduced into the injury site. My lab is designing injectable, biodegradable gels that provide temporary protection to transplanted cells, greatly improving their therapeutic efficacy.
What advice do you have for aspiring scientist researchers in the field?
There is no single recipe for how to become a great scientist, because success in science comes in many different flavors. It’s been important for me to ignore the stereotypes about how a scientist “should” act or talk or think, and instead focus on how I can continuously learn new things that I find exciting.
