Sierra is a Senior Scientist and Analyst at IndieBio, where she is responsible for sourcing and performing due diligence on new companies, as well as for supporting existing portfolio companies to grow their value.

Sierra completed her BS in Chemical-Biological Engineering at MIT, where she worked in three different research labs to help develop platforms spanning extended-release drug delivery systems, on-demand protein biomanufacturing, and electroreduction of CO2 to fuels. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. During her PhD, she leveraged advancements at the interface of metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, and materials science to develop Engineered Living Materials with broad applications in distributed biomanufacturing and in situ drug delivery. Motivated to translate cutting edge scientific developments outside of the lab, Sierra also consulted for several biotech and climatetech startups in the Austin area, where she lead efforts in scale up and technology commercialization.

When she’s not deep diving into breakthrough technologies, Sierra spends her time running, playing pickleball, hucking frisbees, exploring new breweries and coffee shops, and getting lost in the enticing aisles of Trader Joe’s.