Senior Scientist

Company Description

By working at Harvard University, you join a vibrant community that advances Harvard's world‑changing mission in meaningful ways, inspires innovation and collaboration, and builds skills and expertise. We are dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming environment where everyone can thrive.

Why join the Wyss Institute at Harvard University?

The Wyss Institute’s mission is to transform healthcare and the environment by emulating the way nature builds. We harness the imagination of academia and the focus of industry to translate ground‑breaking technologies into commercial products that solve big problems. We support research that universities, companies, and venture capital firms don’t fund because they view it as too risky. We prefer to use the word “challenging,” and we love challenges.

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About you:

You have a passion for translational research and want to be a part of a dynamic team dedicated to the design, development and translation of novel sensing and materials platforms within a highly interdisciplinary research environment. You enjoy working with diverse groups of people and leveraging your expertise to support and advance nanotechnology‑enabled therapeutics, diagnostics, biosensing and sustainability‑focused technologies. You thrive in a fast‑paced work environment.

About the Role:

Reporting to the Principal Scientist and in coordination with Wyss Faculty, you will lead the sensor platform development to ensure that deliverables are met and bring your technology translation expertise to diverse biomedical, environmental and bio‑inspired engineering domains. You will develop innovative materials that are optimized not only for performance, but importantly for scalability, manufacturability, and cost‑effective production.

What you'll do:

• Provide intellectual leadership and technical direction for the design, optimization, and validation of chemical sensing elements and materials platforms;
  Define and drive the scientific strategy for sensing‑element development across multiple technical aims, ensuring alignment with performance requirements, system‑level constraints, and sponsored‑research deliverables.
• Manages validation and sponsored projects ensuring workflows are running efficiently and project goals and milestones are achieved.
• Design and execute experiments, interpreting complex multi‑parameter datasets, and iterating materials and sensor concepts based on figures of merit such as sensitivity, selectivity, stability, reusability, and calibration requirements;
  Lead efforts to integrate sensing materials into sensor arrays and device architectures, including PCB‑level integration and collaboration with AI, microfluidics, and data‑analysis experts to enable modular and tunable sensing systems.
• Develop and optimize chemical processes and materials formulations with a strong emphasis on scalability, cost reduction, manufacturability, and sustainability, ensuring that sensing technologies can transition beyond proof‑of‑concept prototypes.
• Establish best practices for documentation, experimental planning, and knowledge transfer, supporting continuity across team members and projects:
  Mentor and may supervise junior researchers contributing to a collaborative, curious, and rigorous research culture within the lab and the broader Wyss ecosystem.
• Contribute to writing research proposals and reports, abstracts, grants and patent submissions: providing text, critical data & figures.
• Leverage deep expertise and experimental rigor in nanostructured materials, nanoparticles, functional polymers, surface chemistry, and multiscale materials characterization, to support and advance other high‑impact Wyss Institute technology platforms;
  Collaborates regularly with other Wyss researchers, industry experts, business development and other stakeholders.

What you'll need:

• Advanced degree required in Chemistry, Materials Science, Applied Physics or related field.
• A minimum of 6 years of experience in chemical sensing, functional materials, polymers, surface…