Silvija Gradečak seeks to better the world through new materials
When Silvija Gradečak was born, her hometown of Vukovar, now in Croatia, was still part of Yugoslavia. Both of her parents worked in a shoe factory, but her father, a chemical engineer, may have set the stage for her future career: “He always had a lot of chemicals and materials around the house, and from early on I started to play with these things,” recalls Gradečak, now an associate professor of materials science and engineering at MIT.Playing with materials, in a way, has become her life’s work: Gradečak now studies materials that could help to improve energy harvesting and conversion, or processes that could improve the properties of materials used in various industrial and high-tech applications.Her parents always put a strong emphasis on education and a strong work ethic, Gradečak says. “They really were role models,” she says, and she learned early “that hard work and effort really pays off.”But...