Dr. Lucila Garcia-Contreras is Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from The University of Georgia, with a Fulbright Scholarship. Following a postdoctoral position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Dr. Garcia-Contreras moved up the ranks to Research Associate Professor. During these years, she focused on the design, formulation and evaluation of drugs and vaccines delivered by the pulmonary route for the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis.

In 2011 Dr Garcia-Contreras joined the faculty of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center where she has extended her research to other respiratory infectious diseases and to novel approaches to treat gynecological and lung cancers.

She has published more than 80 peer reviewed articles and book chapters in the pharmaceutical and biomedical literature on the delivery and disposition of drugs and vaccines after pulmonary administration. Dr. Garcia-Contreras is particularly known for her work on pulmonary administration of compounds to laboratory animal models and pharmacokinetics of inhaled drugs, and tuberculosis.