Elizabeth Walker is a Ph.D. student in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of Iowa, where she holds the Kammermeyer Graduate Fellowship. Elizabeth is passionate about the field’s boundless potential for innovation and creativity. She is interested in understanding microbiological mechanisms to address sustainability challenges such as plastic degradation and sustainable value-added chemical production. Elizabeth earned her B.S. in Biological Engineering from Utah State University, where she researched microalgae as an alternative cell culture medium for cellular agriculture. She is expanding her expertise in synthetic and metabolic engineering to optimize microbes for targeted product production.