Erica completed her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering with a minor in bioengineering at the University of Toronto before continuing to pursue her PhD in Chemical Engineering. Her research focuses on developing and characterizing prebiotics to study their impacts on the gastrointestinal microbiota, and prebiotic-pathogen interactions. In addition to her research on prebiotics, Erica is also the Co-Founder of a startup called 'Opal Technologies', that aims to sustainably produce specialty chemicals by up-cycling low-value biomaterials.