Four women who have made ground-breaking contributions in different disciplines describe their research, which has not only involved ‘thinking outside the box,’ but in some cases persevering in the face of skepticism. Two presenters work on the frontier of biological systems and materials science, and find both inspiration and practical subject matter in aquatic life forms. For Angela Belcher, the abalone offers a model for development of organic/inorganic hybrid structures. The shell of this creature, which is 3000 times tougher than its purely geological counterpart, consists of stacks of calcium carbonate in precise geometries, made from just 20 different amino acids, says Belcher. Some years ago, she had the insight that it might be possible to fabricate hybrid materials, kind of like an abalone, “at a living/nonliving interface.” She set about creating an organism that could build structures like battery electrodes, using bacterial hosts injected with viruses that had an affinity for a particular material. “When I said I was trying to develop a genetic link between semiconductor materials and biology, I was told I was insane,” says Belcher. “But it came out OK.” Undaunted, Belcher is now developing biological batteries with virus-sized electrodes and other devices for environmental and medical applications.  Christine Ortiz can probe structural biological materials down to the molecular level. She wants to understand the bio-mechanical architecture of organisms inside and out that contribute to their ability to withstand harsh conditions such as high temperatures and pressures, and physical blasts, and find ways of emulating these systems for human use. She was drawn to biological materials “because of their complexity and beauty,” and collected a lab full of live, exotic animal models. She fastened on one particularly helpful organism: the three-spined stickleback fish whose flexible ceramic armor resists penetration. Ortiz examined this fish armor...