3D Printing Medical Devices

Joseph DeSimone is a chemist by training who started out specializing in polymers, looking at ways to make them more environmentally sustainable. He has since gained recognition for his work on 3D printing technologies, and he also focuses on applications of polymer technology in medical fields. DeSimone has worked on polymers as small as nanoparticles and as large as automotive parts, and for fields as divergent as nanomedicine and battery technology. He is currently the Sanjiv Sam Gambhir Professor of Translational. Medicine and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. In 2016, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and he was the recipient of the 2018 National Academy of Sciences' Raymond and Beverly Stickler Prize in Convergence Research. DeSimone, spoke with American Scientist Editor-in-Chief Fenella Saunders about his research. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.