Pia Sörensen is Senior Preceptor in Chemical Engineering and Applied Materials at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She directs Harvard’s Science and Cooking program, which includes co-teaching the well-known general education course Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science with colleagues Michael Brenner and David Weitz. She led the course’s development to an online course on HarvardX with subscribers from around the world. She also teaches a popular course on the chemistry of food fermentations.
Sörensen’s research interests range from science and engineering education — with an emphasis on online education and creative ways of teaching science and engineering in a liberal arts setting — to the science of food and the chemical and microbial processes of food fermentations. She is author and editor of several books, including an interactive online textbook, and two volumes on online chemistry education (American Chemical Society/Oxford University Press).
Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 2011, she received a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University, and a PhD in Chemical Biology from Harvard University