Dr. Dimitra Stratis-Cullum is the essential research program manager for Transformational Synthetic biology for Military Environments (TRANSFORME) at the Army’s corporate laboratory, Combat Capability Development Command Army Research Laboratory (CCDC ARL). Previously she led the biomaterials team and living materials program at ARL. Dimitra Stratis-Cullum’s primary research interests relate to harnessing biological systems for low cost, low energy adaptive production of specialty materials for the Army, expanded forward logistics, and sensing in austere military environments. Prior to joining ARL in 2002, Dr. Stratis-Cullum received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of South Carolina, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Her scientific advances are evidenced by over 130 publications and several invention disclosures. These publication have been favorably cited over 2900 times. In recognition of her fundamental and applied research in synthetic recognition materials, Dr. Stratis-Cullum recently received the 2012 Army Research and Development Achievement Award (RDA), the 2014 ARL Honorary Award for Science, the 2015 Sensors best paper award, and was elected in 2019 as Fellow of the SPIE, The International Society of Optics and Photonics.