Mexican American, Dr. Lydia Villa-Komaroff is deeply committed to the recruitment and retention of minorities in science. As founding member of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, Villa-Komaroff has served as both a board member and vice president of the organization. She makes frequent presentations to students of all ages and provides lab research opportunities for high school and undergraduate students.

She currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Cytonome, Inc., a company building the first optical cell sorter of human cells for therapeutic use. Villa-Komaroff was a key member of the research team that first demonstrated that bacterial cells could produce insulin, pioneering work that is widely cited in the book “Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Clone the Insulin Gene” by Stephen Hall.

During her 20 year research career, Villa-Komaroff has held positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, University of Massachusetts Medical School and Harvard Medical School. As a science administrator, she has served as Vice President for Research at Northwestern University in Illinois and the Vice President for Research and Chief Operating Officer of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.