Kara Helmke Rogers received her undergraduate degrees at the University of Texas at Austin, with a B.S. in Biology (Dean's Scholars) and B.A. in Honors Liberal Arts (Plan II). She received her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from UC Berkeley where she studied the molecular mechanisms of cell division. Following her graduate studies, Kara was the Education and Program Coordinator for the UCSF Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology where she taught synthetic biology and supervised team undergraduate research experiences, and coordinated diverse K-12 and public education/outreach opportunities. In 2015 she transitioned to Stanford's Bioengineering department, serving as a Lecturer running open-ended project-based lab courses in biology and needs-based design, as well as evaluating and developing the overall undergraduate BioE curriculum. She was excited to move back to UT as a Research Educator with the FRI in the Antibiotics stream, and has been the Director of the FRI Program since February 2019.