Lara Estroff, a materials scientist who studies how seashells and bones are formed and then tries to synthesize new materials in the laboratory that emulate the versatility of these natural composites, became the first College of Engineering faculty member hired as part of Cornell's New Life Sciences Initiative when she accepted an assistant professorship in Cornell's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Estroff's interdisciplinary work bridges the physical and life sciences, which makes her a good fit for the new initiative.

"My work wouldn't be possible without the organisms and without collaboration with biologists who study sea organisms," Estroff said from a Harvard University laboratory where she is finishing a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship. She plans to start work in Ithaca in August.

Estroff's work takes inspiration from biomineralization -- how organisms use minerals and combine them with proteins to make such highly resilient compounds as bones and seashells. Since materials with properties similar to those found in nature are difficult to reproduce in the lab, Estroff looks at natural processes in the hope of making synthetic materials with improved structural properties.

She is also looking at how creatures such as sea urchins, for example, can take minerals and sculpt them to suit their purposes, as researchers also find it difficult to get minerals to conform to desired shapes in their labs.

Estroff received her B.A. degree with honors in 1997 from Swarthmore College, where she majored in chemistry and minored in anthropology. She received her Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale University in 2003.

"I am looking forward to the collaborative environment at Cornell, and the fact the engineers talk to biologists and physicists and chemists," Estroff said.