Dr. Ludmilla Aristilde grew up in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. After emigrating to the U.S., Aristilde enjoyed studying her two passions, art and environmental science, at Cornell University where she completed a dual-degree program with a B.F.A. in Fine Arts and a B.S. in Science of Earth Systems. During her doctoral studies at the University of California-Berkeley, Aristilde worked on the environmental chemistry and toxicology of veterinary antibiotics under the supervision of Dr. Garrison Sposito. Following the completion of her PhD, Aristilde went to Grenoble (France) as an American Fulbright scholar to study different spectroscopic techniques to investigate organo-mineral interactions. She spent three years as a NSF postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University learning how to use molecular biology tools to tackle problems at the interface of environmental chemistry and biological processes. Prof. Aristilde started her faculty career at Cornell University (Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering) as an Assistant Professor in 2012 and promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2018. Prof. Aristilde joined the Northwestern Faculty in 2019.
Dr Aristilde’s areas of expertise are in the combined application of experimental and computational tools in chemistry and biochemistry to gain novel molecular insights underlying the dynamics of organics in environmental processes. The goal of the Aristilde Group is to obtain a fundamental understanding of the “why” and “how” of the environmental behavior of organics, with implications for nutrient cycling, ecosystem health, agricultural productivity, and environmental biotechnology.