Lydia Contreras Receives Walter A. Rosenblith Young Investigator of the Year Award
Lydia Contreras, assistant professor and the Chevron Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Chemical Engineering, recently received the Walter A. Rosenblith Young Investigator of the Year Award from the Health Effects Institute (HEI).
The award, the only one of its kind awarded annually by HEI, supports the work of a promising scientist early in his or her career for three years. The Boston-based institute is a non-profit independent research organization that provides high-quality, impartial, and relevant science on the health effects of air pollution.
Contreras received $450K to fund her research in engineering technologies to understand regulatory changes and oxidative stresses in cells exposed to various environmental pollutants. This work complements her research on mapping regulatory networks in extremophiles supported by an NSF CAREER Award and her work on radiation-activated networks for novel sensing technologies funded by an Air Force Young Investigator Award.
She received the award May 4, 2015 at a ceremony during the HEI Annual Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Supported jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency and industry (manufacturers and marketers of motor vehicles or engines), HEI has funded hundreds of studies that have produced important research findings on the health effects of a variety of pollutants, including carbon monoxide, methanol and aldehydes, nitrogen oxides, diesel exhaust, ozone, and most recently, particulate air pollution.
Tags: chemical engineering, HEI, Lydia Contreras, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, NSF Career Award, radiation- activated networks, The University of Texas at Austin, Walter A. Rosenblith Young Investigator of the Year Award