Pamela Peralta-Yahya graduated from Macalester College in 2003 with a double major in Chemistry and Biology. She earned her Ph.D. with Prof. Virginia Cornish at Columbia University and was a postdoctoral researcher under the advice of Prof. Jay Keasling at the University of California, Berkeley/ Joint BioEnergy Institute. Pamela is currently an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her group works at the interphase of biochemistry and engineering and focuses on two research areas: the engineering of G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR)-based chemical sensors for biotechnology and biomedical applications, and the microbial synthesis of chemically modified plant alkaloids to accelerate the synthesis of pharmaceuticals. She has won several awards including the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the DuPont Young Professor Award, Kavli Fellowship and more recently the NIH MIRA Award.