Third-year graduate student and Fulbright Scholar Erika López-Lara (P. Weiss group) has been accepted into the new UCLA Science & Food Future of Food Fellows Program.
The inaugural UCLA Future of Food Fellows program supports UCLA graduate students with aspirations to make cellular agriculture a feasible complement for animal protein production through scientific research.
As a Future Food Fellow (Jul 1, 2024 – Jun 30, 2025), Erika will receive $50,000 annually for tuition/salary, including $10,000 for supplies, materials, and travel, and can request up to $5,000 per year for an undergraduate student researcher stipend.
According to Erika, the meat industry faces significant issues related to environmental degradation and health risks due to high saturated fat content. Cultivated meat offers a sustainable and nutritionally balanced solution by growing animal cells in nutrient-rich environments that mimic natural processes. However, current methods encounter challenges such as inadequate oxygen and nutrient transfer, high costs, and reliance on non-edible or animal-derived scaffolds. To overcome these limitations, Erika’s goal is to develop legume-based scaffolds using oxygen-releasing species and encapsulated vegetable fat, aiming for better nutrient distribution, controlled fat content, and scalable, cost-effective production.
About Erika López-Lara
Erika received her bachelor’s degree in Nanotechnology and Chemical Sciences from Tecnologico de Monterrey and her dual master’s in Materials Science from University of Montpellier and University of Turin. She researched technologies for carbon capture and sequestration, biomaterials, and polymeric membranes for water electrolysis.
During her major, Erika founded the Worldwide Education in Environmental Development and Sustainability (W.E.E.D.S), an NGO based in Mexico that aims to make sustainability accessible for everyone. Currently, there are around 30 people working in the organization in two cities of Mexico. Their projects include a program for sustainable entrepreneurship, research and development of low-impact daily products, climate literacy for low-income children, social media activism, among other activities. Throughout the years, this organization have impacted thousands of people with the projects and formed many alliances. She is also a climate leader and mentor for people in Mexico and the United States at the Climate Reality Project. Due to her activism activities, she has been a speaker in over 20 conferences including platforms such as TEDx and the European Union.
Erika is currently a third-year graduate student in Professor Paul Weiss’ group, where she is studying the development of sustainable scaffolds for cellular agriculture. Her aim is to contribute with her work to tackle the environmental challenges we are facing.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
