Caroline de Gracia Lux received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Strasbourg under the mentorship of Marie Pierre Krafft, Ph.D. synthesizing and evaluating new classes of fluorinated surfactants to promote self-assembly and compartmentalized systems for material science applications.

Following her Ph.D., she completed postdoctoral training at UCSD focusing on biocompatible materials for theranostic applications. She was instrumental in the success of various projects on polymeric materials that degrade and release their contents in response to either abnormal biological conditions or by remote optical activation. She concurrently completed a Micro-MBA program at UCSD (Rady School of Management) that focused on communication, leadership in high performance teams, finance, strategy and marketing.

She joined the newly established Translational Research in Ultrasound Theranostics program at UT Southwestern Dept of Radiology in September 2015. Her current research interest is combining creative synthetic chemistry and formulation to develop ultrasound contrast agent with sophisticated architecture aimed to address a wide range of challenges in cancer imaging and treatment.

Ongoing projects focus on the stabilization of low boiling point perfluorocarbon emulsion using a low interfacial tension approach, the development of new activatable ultrasound contrast agents and multimodal imaging probes.