"Storied Women of MIT" is a series of 60-second historical profiles of MIT students, researchers, and staff that demonstrates the role of women at the Institute from its founding to today.

Kristala Jones Prather '94 is Professor, MacVicar Faculty Fellow, and Graduate Admissions Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering. She heads the Prather Lab at MIT, with a research focus on metabolic engineering, biochemical engineering, bioprocess engineering, synthetic biology.

Chemical engineering is the perfect backdrop for our research. We engineer microbes to produce chemical compounds. Some may look at this and think biology, but if you were able to peer inside a cell, you’d witness thousands of chemical reactions inside a microbial chemical factory.

Kristala Jones Prather