Please join us for a HUGs + STEM Lunchtime Conversation with Kristala L. J. Prather, Arthur D. Little Professor of Chemical Engineering and MacVicar Faculty Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
On Wednesday, October 9, 2019 at 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm, Dr. Prather will be at CSREA for an informal lunchtime conversation about women and people of color in STEM. What are the opportunities? What are the visible and invisible barriers and hurdles? What are some good strategies for leveling the playing field in the ever-expanding and influential STEM industries?
We will serve lunch and spaces are limited, so please RSVP to Caitlin Scott at [email protected].
Later that evening, Dr. Prather will give a lecture as part of the Brown University Presidential Colloquium Series, Thinking Out Loud: Deciphering Mysteries of Our World and Beyond. For more information, visit https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/events/thinking-out-loud/kristala-prather.
Speaker
Kristala Jones Prather is the Arthur D. Little Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. She received an S.B. degree from MIT in 1994 and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1999), and worked 4 years in BioProcess Research and Development at the Merck Research Labs prior to joining the faculty of MIT. Her research interests are centered on the design and assembly of recombinant microorganisms for the production of small molecules, with additional efforts in novel bioprocess design approaches. A particular focus is the elucidation of design principles for the production of unnatural organic compounds with engineered control of metabolic flux within the framework of the burgeoning field of synthetic biology. Prather is the recipient of an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2005), a Technology Review “TR35” Young Innovator Award (2007), a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2010), the Biochemical Engineering Journal Young Investigator Award (2011), and the Charles Thom Award of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (2017). Additional honors include selection as the Van Ness Lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2012), as a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2014-2015), and as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS; 2018). Prather has been recognized for excellence in teaching with the C. Michael Mohr Outstanding Faculty Award for Undergraduate Teaching in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering (2006, 2016), the MIT School of Engineering Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching (2010), and through appointment as a MacVicar Faculty Fellow (2014), the highest honor given for undergraduate teaching at MIT.