Lydia Contreras is a full professor at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

. She is an American chemical engineer most notable for her work on

biomolecular engineering Biomolecular engineering is the application of engineering principles and practices to the purposeful manipulation of molecules of biological origin. Biomolecular engineers integrate knowledge of biological processes with the core knowledge of chemi ...

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinians, Augustinian ...

, and

drug discovery In the fields of medicine, biotechnology, and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which new candidate medications are discovered. Historically, drugs were discovered by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or ...

Education

Contreras earned her B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering in 2003 from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

and her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2008 from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

Academic career

Contreras is known for her experimental and computational work on understanding molecular features that lead to the interaction of RNAs and proteins. Her work has led to the development of new methods and understanding of, for instance, the capacity of RNA nucleotides to establish intermolecular RNA interactions via high-throughput characterization of RNA interfaces. Following the completion of her PhD, she served as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Genetics and Bioinformatics, Wadsworth Center at the New York State Department of Health from 2008 to 2010. She then served as a visiting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

before she began serving as an assistant professor at the

. In 2017, she was promoted to Associate Professor in the department of chemical engineering.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Contreras, Lydia Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American chemical engineers Chemical engineering academics American women chemical engineers 21st-century American chemists Dominican Republic emigrants to the United States People from Santo Domingo Cornell University College of Engineering alumni Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni University of Texas at Austin faculty