Lara earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard in molecular and cellular biology and psychology, where she conducted research on pancreatic islet metabolism at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Specifically, she investigated how to make these cells more resilient to diabetes-causing stressors and help them perform their normal function of secreting insulin. After graduating, Lara worked in biotech, focusing on creating innovative treatments for rare muscular dystrophies. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in pharmacology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she works on CD8 T cell cancer immunology-the study of how to get certain immune cells to recognize and kill cancer cells.
Lara grew up in South Africa before moving to the United States for college at the age of 18. In South Africa, she and her family had a pack of five golden retrievers!