LydiaContreras

Texas Engineer Lydia Contreras
ProfessorPaul D. Betty Robertson Meek Centennial Professorship in Chemical Engineering

Research Areas
Research Interests

Biomolecular engineering; Biotechnology; Metabolic and cellular engineering

About

Lydia M. Contreras is a professor of chemical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and a member of the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology. Contreras earned a B.S.E. in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 2003, graduating Cum Laude. She completed her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Cornell University in 2008, focusing on engineering bacterial cells for improved production of therapeutic proteins. As a postdoctoral associate at the Wadsworth Center (New York State Department of Health), she focused on understanding mechanisms of infection in pathogenic bacteria driven by noncoding RNAs.

She began her career at The University of Texas at Austin in 2011 and has received several awards including: an NSF CAREER, ACS BIOT Young Investigator Award, Biotechnology and Bioengineering Daniel I.C. Wang Award, Department of Thrust Reduction Agency (DTRA) Young Investigator, Airforce Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator, Health and Environmental Institute (HEI) Walter E. Rosenblith New Investigator, Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program (NHARP) Early Career, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Young Investigator Award, and an Innovative Early-Career Frontiers of Engineering Educator.

Educational Qualifications

NIH Postdoctoral Fellow (Infectious Diseases), Division of Developmental Genetics and Bioinformatics, Wadsworth Center-New York State Dept. of Health, Albany, NY (2008-2010)
Ph.D., Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University (2008)
B.S.E., Chemical Engineering, Princeton University (2003)

Select Awards & Honors

  • American Academy of Microbiology fellow (2023)
  • Young Investigator Award – Society of Hispanic Professional Engineering (SHPE) (
  • NSF CAREER Award (2013-2018)
  • Postdoctoral Development and Enrichment Award – FASEB (2009)
  • Edna and William Hooey Award – Chemical Engineering Department, Cornell University (2007)
  • NSF IGERT Fellow – Cornell University (2004-2006)

Select Publications

Google Scholar Research Gate

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