Svetlana V. Boriskina is a research scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her PhD degree in physics and mathematics from Kharkiv National University, Ukraine. She previously worked at the University of Nottingham, UK, and Boston University. Her research focuses on the development of smart fabrics for thermal comfort, new metamaterials to manipulate light in unusual ways, and solar-harvesting platforms to provide clean energy and fresh water to off-grid and disaster-stricken communities. Boriskina has authored over 110 publications, served as the Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI on multiple U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Energy, and NATO-funded projects, holds many patents on sensor, energy-conversion, and desalination systems. Svetlana received a Joint Award of the International Commission for Optics and the A. Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, a NATO-UK Royal Society Fellowship, and a SUMMA Graduate Fellowship in Electromagnetics. She is a Director-at-Large at the Optical Society (OSA), and an associate editor of Optics Express and Journal of Optics. Boriskina can be reached by email at sborisk@mit.edu.