2022 GMiS Luminary Honorees

As a research scientist at Dow, Dr. Elva Lugo leads the company’s pipe product development portfolio. In this role, she directs a cross-functional team composed of technical, research and development, and even marketing talent to improve and develop the next generation of pipe technologies.  To date, she has filed 6 patent applications, 5 journal publications, and 8 conference presentations.  Not bad for a kid from the small town of Riohacha in the Caribbean region of Colombia!

Even as a young girl, Dr. Lugo was fascinated with science thanks in no small part to her engineer father and bank manager mother.  She enrolled at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá to pursue chemical engineering, and in her junior year she applied for and received a research internship at Texas A&M University.  This motivated her to return for graduate school a year later.

After completing her Ph.D. in May 2016, Dr. Lugo joined the Dow Chemical Company as a senior engineer in the R&D research assignments program in Freeport, Texas. Since then, her roles and responsibilities have only increased as she exhibited leadership and tenacity on projects of ever-growing complexity and importance across multiple product lines.

Dr. Lugo’s passion in her work is matched by her dedication to empowering the next generation.  She enjoys mentoring new employees in the company and dedicates significant time to helping them grow and succeed, and she served on the steering team for the New Texas Researchers Organization at Dow from 2018 to 2021.