Early life and undergraduate work
Sarah M. Coleman was born and raised in Austin, TX. She graduated from L.C. Anderson High School in 2015, receiving an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma. Her Extended Essay, or mini-thesis, was about the golden ratio (\(\phi\)). Sarah was a high school athlete, serving on the varsity team at the Texas Rowing Center. In 2014, she was recognized nationally as a recipient of the 2014-2015 US Rowing Scholastic Honor Roll.
She continued her education at MIT, receiving her S.B. in Chemical-Biological Engineering in Spring 2019. At MIT, she researched in the labs of Dr. Gregory Stephanopoulos and Dr. Michael Strano, for two years and one year, respectively. With Dr. Stephanopolous, she developed anaerobic assays to evaluate enzymes involved in carbon dioxide metabolism. With Dr. Strano, she helped improve the duration time of light emitted from nanoparticles embedded in a living plant. Her undergraduate research with Dr. Strano assisted in an art exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in Summer 2019.
Graduate work
In Fall 2019, Sarah M. Coleman began her doctoral research in the Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin (UT), in the lab of Dr. Hal S. Alper. In Spring 2021, Sarah was awarded the NSF GRFP as a second-year graduate student.Sarah defended her PhD in Chemical Engineering in Summer 2024, with a dissertation entitled “A Yeast Grease Feast: Expanding waste valorization by Yarrowia clade yeasts to nontraditional and hydrophobic substrates”. Her graduate work focused on the genetic engineering of yeast to metabolize waste and produce industrially relevant chemicals. Along the way, she gained wet-lab experience in cloning, high-throughput screening, bioreactor fermentations, chromatography, and many more analytical techniques. She was a productive graduate student, with five publications at the first- or co-first authorship level (including one preprint) and 11 authorships total.
Concurrently with her dissertation work, Sarah increased her interest in advanced data visualization, statistical analyses and bioinformatics. This was partially out of necessity (she needed to use these tools in her doctoral research) and partially because she found it fascinating. She took as many additional courses at UT that she could, enough to receive a M.S. in Statistics in Spring 2024. Sarah also tried her hand at grant writing! In 2022, Sarah was awarded the Green Fund Grant from The University of Texas at Austin Department of Sustainability to support her doctoral research.
Postdoctoral work
In Fall 2024, Sarah began her position as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Environmental Biostatistics in the Department of Statistics and Data Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Dr. Roger D. Peng. She had enjoyed her statistics classes in graduate school immensely and wanted the opportunity to partake in statistical research full time. Roger’s research focuses on the impact of outdoor air pollution on human health. With Roger, Sarah is interested in studying what interventions could be the most helpful, and how effective current interventions are.
As an engineer surrounded by a bunch of data scientists and statisticians, Sarah began fostering connections and relationships in her new department. In Summer 2025, Sarah (presenting author) won the Professional division of the JSM Data Science Expo Challenge, along with three other UT Austin postdoctoral fellows.
In Spring 2026, Sarah was appointed as the Instructor of Record for an upper-level undergraduate course at UT, Elements of Data Science (SDS 322E). She teaches this course in addition to her postdoctoral research responsibilities. In this role she manages the entire course, including lectures, assignments, and office hours, and also supervises three teaching assistants. She is enjoying the opportunity to lecture on the skills she learned as a graduate student, especially given her real-world background and experience in biotechnology.
Other experience
During her summers at MIT, Sarah interned in pharmaceutical process development for vaccines and cancer therapeutics at Takeda Vaccines and Bristol-Myers Squibb, respectively. During the school year at MIT, Sarah worked as a math tutor for a local nonprofit, Girls’ Angle. Although she now considers herself more proficient in R and Python, Sarah will never forget her first programming language, MATLAB. In fact, Sarah served as the MATLAB and Simulink Student Ambassador for the University of Texas at Austin from 2020 to 2021.
Sarah is also a student leader; at MIT, she served as the President of the MIT AIChE Chapter (previously serving as Intracollegiate Chair and Sophomore Class Representative) and the Program Administrator of the Chemical Engineering Freshman Pre-Orientation Program (FPOP; previously serving as Head Counselor and Counselor of the Engineering division). She was also a second year-leader in MIT’s Gordon Engineering Leadership Program. During her time in graduate school, she served as the President (previously serving as Outreach Coordinator and Enrichment Chair) of the Chemical Engineering Graduate Leadership Council (ChE GLC).
Fun facts
Sarah founded a club at MIT, Fruit Club, with a former roommate. The purpose of this club is to hang out and eat fruit, with events such as “The Inaugural Melon Ball”. The motto of Fruit Club is “When life gives you lemons, bring them to Fruit Club”!
Sarah occasionally performed as TIM the beaver (the MIT mascot) in college!
Sarah’s Academic Family Tree (based on her PhD advisor lineage) goes back to the 1400s and includes Isaac Newton!
Sarah has a corgi named Chief! He is almost two years old and very cute.
Sarah LOVES fermentation both in and out of the lab, and is an avid kombucha brewer and sourdough baker. She gave a public talk about edible fermentation to Nerd Nite Austin in January 2026.
