Katharine E. Jensen is an Associate Professor of Physics at Williams College. She earned her A.B. in Physics at Princeton, then spent two years as a researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. She completed her Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard studying structures and defects in soft crystals and glasses. Her postdoctoral research investigating soft interface mechanics started at Yale in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and later moved to the Department of Materials at ETH Zürich. At Williams, her lab’s research focuses on the mechanics of soft materials and highly-deformable interfaces, including work with soft adhesive materials, fluid surface instabilities, and the biophysics of plants harnessing energy from water. Her work at Williams and with Williams students has been recognized with major research grants from both the National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society, as well as the 2023 Outstanding Early Career Adhesion Scientist Award from the Adhesion Society.