She joined UCF in January 2017 from a postdoctoral appointment at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2011 where she was awarded a NSFIGERT fellowship and Graduate Teaching Fellowship. Leon obtained her BS in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Mathematics and Chemistry from the University of Florida in 2004. Leon is an experimentalist with research interests at the intersection of biomaterials and polymer science ranging from nanomedicine to the templating of inorganic material. Her lab is focused on expanding the selfassembly toolbox to include multiple, synergistic molecular interactions using biomolecules, particularly peptides and peptide/polymer conjugates.