Biography of LydiaBiography of Lydia Villa-KomoroffVilla-Komoroff

and feel I am following my personal mission, and I think that is key for anyone to find a good balance in the first place.

Finally, as a bit of humor ….

9. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, free of charge and all expenses included, where would you go?

I love travelling and having expenses fjlkjk included would always be amazing, though the “time” factor is also key and sometimes limitative. At this moment in life I’d possibly do a roadtrip in the USA and Latin America. I would visit some of the most legendary places in these countries, be next to some of the most amazing natural wonders of the world, and of course find some time to rest and chill on a nice beach.

Sarah Holm

Biography

LYDIA VILLA-KOMAROFF

Lydia Villa-Komaroff was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on 7 August 1947 and is a molecular and cellular biologist who has been an academic laboratory scientist, a university administrator, and a businesswoman. She was the third MexicanAmerican woman in the United States to receive a doctorate degree in the sciences and is a co-founding member of The Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). Her most notable discovery was in 1978 during her post-doctoral research, when she was part of a team that discovered how bacterial cells could be used to generate insulin.

At the age of nine, Lydia Villa-Komaroff knew she wanted to be a scientist and was influenced by her uncle, a chemist, and by the love her grandmother had for nature and plants. After graduating high school in 1965, she entered the University of Washington in Seattle as a chemistry major. After being told that women did not belong in chemistry, she switched majors, settling on biology.

In 1967, she moved to Washington D.C with her boyfriend Anthony Komaroff who she ended up marrying in 1970 and applied to grgrgr

SOURCE: KGI.EDU

Johns Hopkins University to complete her undergraduate degree but did not enter, due to women not being accepted at the time, settling on their sister university grggrr

Goucher College. She received her Bachelor of Science in Biology and moved to Boston to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

There, she completed graduate work in molecular biology. In 1973, she became a founding member of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native in Science (SACNAS). Lydia Villa-Komaroff completed her Ph.D. in cell biology in 1975 and went to Harvard University to conduct her postdoctoral research for three years, focusing on recombinant DNA technology. She moved for six months to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory when Cambridge banned experiments on recombinant DNA citing worries about public safety and the chance of unintentionally creating a new disease, but once the ban was lifted, she returned to Harvard and joined the insulin cloning team. In 1978, she became the first author of a landmark report showing that bacteria could be induced to make proinsulin.

Later that year, she became a faculty member of the University of Massachusetts Medial School, where she was a professor for six years before being granted a tenure. Soon after, Villa-Komaroff decided to take her career to Harvard University, where she was reassured a lighter work load to allow more time for research. In 1995, her research in insulin-related growth factors was featured on a television documentary called “DNA Detectives. ” In 1996, Villa-Komaroff served as Vice President for Research at Northwestern University and professor of neurology at Northwestern University Medical School, both in Chicago, Illinois. In 2003, she was appointed Vice President for Research and Chief Operating officer of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2005, she became chair on the board of a publically traded biotechnology company Transkaryotic Therapeutics, Inc. In 2011, she became a member of the governing board at the Massachusetts Life Science Center. Currently, she is the Chief Executive Officer and Director at Cytonome, Inc.

Many of the awards that Dr. Villa-Komaroff have received include a Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award (1992), induction into the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Hall of Fame (1999), a National Hispanic Scientist of the Year Award from The Museum of Science and Industry (2008), an Honorary Degree from Regis College (2011), and an award for Women of Distinction from American Association of University Women (2013).

Sofia Diogo