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Lisa Pruitt is a Professor and the Lawrence Talbot Chair in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She leads the Medical Polymer Biomaterials Group with a research focus on the structure-property relationships of load-bearing medical-grade polymers and biological materials. Her current projects involve the characterization of fatigue fracture mechanisms and tribological performance of orthopedic polymers. Pruitt's work includes the design and analysis of medical devices such as hip, knee, shoulder, and spine implants. She characterizes retrievals of orthopedic implants to model in vivo degradation mechanisms, with the primary goal of developing micromechanistic links between structural properties and load-bearing capacities of tissue replacements. Her laboratory utilizes various advanced structural characterization techniques including Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Finite Element Method (FEM), Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA), Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), fatigue testing, and fracture analysis.
The Mathematics Subject GRE is required for the Fall 2026 admissions cycle. General GRE is optional.