Luis Herrera-Estrella, PhD

Luis Rafael Herrera-Estrella is the President's Distinguished Professor of Plant Genomics and the Director for the Center for Functional Genomics of Abiotic Stress in the Department of Plant and Soil Science at Texas Tech University's College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources. Dr. Herrera-Estrella came to Texas Tech in 2018 thanks to a grant from the State of Texas Governor's University Research Initiative (GURI). He leads a team in the Center that examines how plants adapt to thrive in the presence of environmental stresses such as extreme heat and cold, drought and in the presence of brackish water sources. Herrera-Estrella is known and respected worldwide for his work in cotton genomics, having earned the distinction in 2015 as one of the 100 most influential people in biotechnology by Scientific American. He previously served as the director and full professor of the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity (LANGEBIO) in Guanajuato, Mexico, where remains a professor emeritus. His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms that allow plants to cope with a continuously changing environment. In particular, he has studied the two fundamental processes of molecular responses to light as a source of energy and a developmental signal, and nutrient availability. Herrera-Estrella was able to eventually identify DNA regulatory elements that allow plants to activate genes in response to light stimuli and the protein sequence present in many corresponding gene products that ultimately allow participation in the photosynthesis process. A holder of 15 patents, Herrera-Estrella has published more than 180 research papers and 47 book chapters and other reviews while having delivered more than 200 presentations on his work. He served as a senior international research scholar at the Howard Hughes Biomedical Institute from 2012 to 2017 and earned the Dr. Luis Federico Leloir Award in 2012 from the Argentinian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Herrera-Estrella earned his doctoral and postdoctoral degrees in genetics from the State University of Ghent, Belgium. He received his master’s degree in genetics and molecular biology from the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, and his bachelor’s degree from Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biológicas Instituto Politécnico Nacional.