Mercedes Taylor got her B.A. in chemistry from Amherst College and her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the UMD faculty, she worked as a research chemist at the National Institutes of Health, doing small-molecule synthesis for drug discovery, and at Sandia National Labs, doing materials synthesis for water purification. Mercedes loves to read fiction, speaks Spanish, and once rode her bicycle across the U.S. (it took a long time).