She has applied these ideas to both robots and disease causing proteins as the director of the Adaptive Motion Planning Research Group at UNM. Before coming to UNM, Lydia was a Computing Innovation Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. She received a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University and a B.S. in Computer Science from Tulane University. At A&M, Lydia was a fellow of the Molecular Biophysics Training Program, GAANN, and Graduate Teaching Academy programs. She was also awarded Sloan and P.E.O. Scholarships. Prior to graduate school, Lydia was a member of technical research staff at Sandia National Laboratories. She lives in Albuquerque with her husband, Bill, and four year old daughter, Iliana, along with their two cats, Marvin and Fresa, and, recent dog adoptee, Sammi.