Serena Birnbaum after defending her thesis. Courtesy photo

By EVA BIRNBAUM
Formerly of Los Alamos

Serena Birnbaum defended her PhD thesis in Polymer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in May 2026. 

Serena graduated from LAHS in 2017, and from Case Western Reserve University with her Bachelor of Engineering in 2021. She is the daughter of Eva Birnbaum and Thomas Mark McCleskey, and granddaughter of Ed & Amy Birnbaum, Alice & Earl Scheelar, and Thomas McCleskey. She will be working at Exponent in Boston.

Her thesis title is “Extending Adhesive Functionality by Tuning Adhesion Through Internal Phase Changes and by Modulating Impact Through Adhesive Interfaces in Metamaterials”