Dr. Christie Peebles earned her B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Texas Tech University and received her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Rice University in 2008. While at Rice, Dr. Peebles worked on the metabolic engineering of the Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) to increase production of two important anti-cancer drugs, vinblastine and vincristine. Following her time at Rice, she spent a year of postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology working on biofuels production in E. coli. At CSU, Dr. Peebles research is focused in the areas of metabolic engineering, secondary metabolism, regulatory networks, and systems biology in plants, bacteria and yeast for the production of bio-based chemicals and fuels. More specifically these areas can be divided into 2 main applications. One application is the use of plant metabolic engineering to produce important pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. The second is the engineering of photoautotrophs for the production of bio-based chemicals and fuels.