Dr. Peña is an associate professor in the UC Davis Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research lies at the intersection of natural, managed, and engineered ecosystems and aims to advance sustainable solutions to environmental quality problems. Peña’s research has significant relevance to contaminant cycling, the biogeochemical pathways by which metals and metalloids are transformed and moved through various states by geological and biological processes.  In addition to improving water quality in ecosystems degraded by human activities and by climate change events, she also seeks to improve the livelihood of disadvantaged communities that are often disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution.

Peña received her B.S. in chemical engineering from Yale University in 2001, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from UC Berkeley in 2004 and 2009, both in environmental engineering. Peña has been working in the field of environmental and molecular biogeochemistry since she joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a research associate in 2001. Peña has a faculty scientist appointment in the Energy Geosciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and plans to engage with the Department of Energy-supported projects and benefit from different user facilities such as the Molecular Foundry and the Advanced Light Source. 

Prior to coming to UC Davis, Peña taught in the Faculty of Geoscience and Environment at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, where she was awarded a grant from the Sandoz Family Foundation to start a research group in environmental mineralogy and geochemistry.