Team Member / ​Jessica Grande

Jessica works with our science and engineering team developing content and ideas for experiments. She’s a research scientist and a chemical and materials engineer.

Jessica has worked for Danaher Corporation creating new ideas for technologies, building cases for funding and producing prototypes developed into medical products. She currently has 10 patents filed in the field of medical devices and one publication underway.

She’s won several awards for her years of work extensively researching and doing hands-on studies of the mechanical properties of spider silk and its applications as to how it can serve in the aid of nerve regeneration and replacement of current suture procedures.

Jessica developed a new "green" polymer made of castor oil that resembles properties of polyurethane and can be used for many different plastic products including making skateboard wheels. She also worked on a project for Apple Corporation Ltd. as part of a team testing the feasibility of materials used to produce Apple iPhone screens.

Before that Jessica worked for Andre and Rodney at Creative Science Education as an educator for four years providing interactive presentations to students and parents and assisted in developing original hands-on STEM activities. She also translated curriculum from English to Spanish and provided hands-on training to interns.

She’s served as the Masters of Ceremony for two years at the Annual Robot Rally, one of the nation’s largest robotics events and aided in the development of a K-12 robotics program for REAL (Robotics Education through Active Learning).

She’s a member of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) – Los Angeles Professional Chapter and partners with communities at home and abroad (recently Cameroon) to design and build sustainable engineering projects to meet basic human needs.

Jessica was the first person in her family to attend and graduate from college and she enjoys sharing her story in hopes of motivating and empowering students, especially young women, to pursue STEM careers.

Fun Facts:
The team has called Jessica “J-Lo” for years because her maiden name is Lopez. Jessica enjoys trying new things and she joins a different workout class every month! Some of her favorites have been ultimate frisbee, soccer, aerial silk, hot yoga, kayaking, glow in the dark yoga, aquatics, fishing, and cross fit! Jessica also adopted a puppy from the rescue shelter (Cleo) and her favorite pastime has become discovering hidden hikes on the weekends with her husband.