| Lydia Contreras | |
| Birth Place: | Santo Domingo, Dominican republic |
| Nationality: | Dominican/US citizen |
| Work Institutions: | University of Texas at Austin |
| Alma Mater: | Cornell University Princeton University |
| Prizes: | Elected to American Institute of microbiology, 2023 American Chemical Society (ACS) Biotechnology Division Young Investigator Award, 2020 Elected to The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, 2019 Mellichamp Emerging Leader Lecture, 2018 Cornell Chemical Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award, 2018 Biotechnology and Bioengineering Daniel I.C. Wang Award, 2016 Society of Hispanic Professional Engineering (SHPE) Young Investigator Award, 2015 Health and Environmental Institute (HEI) Walter E. Rosenblith New Investigator, 2015 Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program (NHARP) Early Career Program, 2014 NSF CAREER Award, 2013 Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator, 2013 Warfield Center Faculty Teaching Award, 2013 Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Young Investigator, 2011 Keystone Symposia Fellow on Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2011 |
Lydia Contreras is a full professor at the University of Texas at Austin.[1] She is an American chemical engineer most notable for her work on biomolecular engineering, genetics, and drug discovery.
Contreras earned her B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering in 2003 from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2008 from Cornell University.
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.[2] [3]
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 before she began serving as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2017, she was promoted to Associate Professor in the department of chemical engineering.[4]