BPE Profile

When Cockrell School alumna Jill Meyers opens her laptop, an image of a Pilatus PC-12 in flight lights up the screen, serving as a daily reminder of the inspiration for her career in aerospace engineering.

As Edgar Figueroa sat over lunch in the UT Club, he reflected on what it meant to him to be the first in his family to attend college. “Pushing through the late nights studying or the challenges of being a first-generation college student was a privilege that others in my family never had,” he said. “I wanted to leave a legacy my family would be proud of.”

Lydia Contreras studies very small organisms, but seeks to answer big questions: how does our environment affect our chemical makeup, and what can we do to improve our response to environmental stress? An assistant professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, Contreras sat down with us to discuss how her work could affect human health.