Kristala Jones Prather facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kristala Jones Prather
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| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of California, Berkeley |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral advisor | Jay Keasling |
Kristala Jones Prather is an American professor who teaches chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her work focuses on using new ways with living things to create tiny organisms. These organisms are designed to make small chemical building blocks.
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Early Life and School
Kristala Jones Prather was born in Cincinnati and grew up in Longview, Texas. Her physics and calculus teachers inspired her to study chemical engineering.
She earned her first degree, a Bachelor of Science, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. During her studies, she was involved with groups like the National Society of Black Engineers and the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers. She then went on to get her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, finishing in 1999.
What Does a Chemical Engineer Do?
After her PhD, Dr. Prather worked for four years at BioProcess R&D and the Merck & Co. labs. There, she used natural processes to change small chemicals. She also worked with special cells to make proteins that could be used as medicines. This allowed her to create drugs using biological methods instead of just chemical reactions.
In 2004, she became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2009, her team achieved something amazing: they created a chemical called glucaric acid using Escherichia coli bacteria. These bacteria had special parts, called enzymes, from three different living organisms!
Research and Awards
In 2014, Dr. Prather was chosen as a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. By 2016, she was a leader in the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center. She also leads her own research group, the Prather lab.
Dr. Prather specializes in something called retrobiosynthesis. This means she designs new ways for cells to make things by adding special, man-made DNA. In 2018, she shared her expert knowledge with the National Academy of Sciences. She spoke about how to keep us safe from harmful biological threats.
Dr. Prather has received many awards for her important research. In 2018, she was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2021, she won the Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress from the American Institute of Chemical Engineering.
In late 2023, Dr. Prather became the head of MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering. This means she now leads the entire chemical engineering department at the university.
Teaching and Helping Others
Dr. Prather is also well-known for her teaching, for guiding students, and for speaking up for important causes. In 2016, she was featured on a show called Spellbound, how kids become scientists.
In 2015, Dr. Prather helped guide a project about synthetic biology for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has also been involved in several programs that support students of color at MIT.
Selected Publications
- Dinh C.V., Chen X., Prather K.L.J. (2020) Development of a Quorum-Sensing Based Circuit for Control of Coculture Population Composition in a Naringenin Production System. ACS Synth Biol.
- Doong S.J., Gupta A. and K.L.J. Prather (2018) Layered dynamic regulation for improving metabolic pathway productivity in Escherichia coli. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A 115(12):2964-2969.
- Fox, K.J. and K.L.J. Prather. 2020. "Production of D-glyceric acid from D-galacturonate in Escherichia coli." J. Ind. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 47:1075–1081.
Honors and Awards
- 2005 - Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award
- 2007 - Technology Review "TR35" Young Innovator Award
- 2010 - National Science Foundation CAREER Award
- 2010 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Engineering Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching
- 2011 - Biochemical Engineering Journal Young Investigator Award
- 2012 - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions
- 2014 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology MacVicar Faculty Fellow
- 2017 - Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology Charles Thom Award
- 2017 - Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award
- 2018 - AAAS Fellow
- 2018 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seed Grant
- 2021 - Gordon Y. Billard Award
- 2021 - AIChE's Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering
