Melanie Arteaga is a Construct Assembly Technician at the Crop Transformation Facility at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's. In her current role, Melanie is responsible for constructing and validating plasmids for plant transformation, contributing to a wide range of research projects that focus on optimizing photosynthesis and advancing plant science. She holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Cornell College and a master’s degree in molecular & cellular biology from the School of Molecular & Cellular Biology at Illinois.