Top women 2026: Michelle O’Malley
She’s engineering nexgen biology
By L. Wayne Hicks
Special to the Business Times
When Michelle O’Malley’s older brother went off to college to study chemical engineering, she was at a loss. She wasn’t quite certain what that was, but she became a quick study. Her initial understanding was that it involved “making oil and chemicals and things. But it’s actually much more than that.”
O’Malley can speak about the topic with a high level of expertise. The Cleveland native earned degrees in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and followed that with a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware. Postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came next. She joined UC Santa Barbara in 2012 as an assistant professor.
Now, just as she followed an initial curiosity about chemical engineering down a career path, O’Malley has collected more titles than she has degrees.
She serves as interim chair of UCSB’s Department of Bioengineering, the Cliff R. Scholle Endowed Chair in Chemical Engineering, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering and director of the NSF BioFoundry for Extreme and Exceptional Fungi, Archaea and Bacteria (ExFAB).
O’Malley is the first woman in campus history to lead a major STEM research center.
“I’m just a type-A person,” O’Malley said. “I see a vision; I really want to execute it. I think I’m good at putting people and ideas together and when I can do that, I think that’s the driving force. I get really excited about, ‘Oh, my gosh. We can do something nobody’s ever done before.’”
From her initial uncertainty about the subject, O’Malley came to realize the breadth of chemical engineering.
“It’s making all kinds of useful products for humanity. And it’s not limited to chemistry. It’s also biology. It’s also environmental engineering. It’s really kind of using nature’s building blocks, at least for me, to do new and different things than what nature does,” she said.
Part of her research involves trying to make value-added chemicals from waste. Agricultural waste, such as what’s left behind after a harvest, can be converted into something of worth, such as flavorings, coatings or fuel.
The work at ExFAB, which began earlier this year, is to determine whether changes to the gut microbiome in babies play a role in the development of a child’s cognition, specifically autism spectrum disorder.
The gut microbiome is cultured and exposed to various factors, such as different foods or antibiotics and then tested for changes in its chemistry. The research could potentially lead to an intervention.
University professors don’t receive stable research funding, but O’Malley has made it work, securing over $46 million in research grants and contracts under her direct management, including ExFAB, and including the $6 million grant from the Wellcome Foundation to study the connection between the gut microbiome and autism.
“It’s the most unique aspect of research I’ve ever been part of, but it’s an opportunity to really make a translational impact,” O’Malley said. “This touches me quite a bit because my youngest son is actually on the spectrum, so I think about this all the time.”
O’Malley, who has an 8-year-old son and 5-year-old twins, said she measures success by the impact she has had.
“You can look at the number of papers published and all that, and that’s all fine, but think the number of PhD students and postdocs that I’ve trained that then go out and use that knowledge to advance science and engineering, that’s really what measures my impact,” she said.
“Michelle is a true superwoman,” said Sherylle Mills Englander, managing director of ExFAB. “She is a highly engaged mother of three in addition to managing one of the largest research groups at UCSB, building a first-of-its-kind anaerobic chamber and managing millions of research dollars.
She is also a master at team building — finding the right people, with the right skills, who have the chemistry to work seamlessly with each other, while enjoying each other’s company.
‘Her team-building skills ensure that any project under her directorship becomes a sum greater than its parts, outperforming expectations. It is an inspiration watching her work.”
In addition to her many degrees and titles, O’Malley has collected an impressive list of awards. For instance, she received an Early Career Award from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2013, which led to her receiving the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers three years later. That particular honor brought her to the White House and the presence of President Barack Obama.
“He was just very attentive to us, and he took a lot of time,” she said. “It was a room of 90 or so people that were all just sort of very starstruck. He spent about an hour with us, talking and telling us about how he really was a champion for what we were all doing and supported us and how he was going to try and make sure that American innovation and science stayed at the forefront.”
O’Malley said she tells her students one piece of advice, which is appropriate beyond the classroom as well.
That is to develop grit, meaning the ability to overcome obstacles, which is a trait that comes in handy when experiments fail. She suggests talking to people about how to approach a problem from a different angle.
“I find that the students who really rise to that occasion end up having a great experience,” she said.
email: [email protected]
