Her lab performs single-cell measurements of chromatin and gene regulation dynamics, and uses these data to develop predictive models of basic biological processes and improve mammalian cell engineering. Lacra started working on the theory of gene regulation as an undergraduate with Jané Kondev from Brandeis University and Rob Phillips from Caltech. As a Physics PhD student in the lab of Carlos Bustamante at U.C. Berkeley, she used single-molecule methods to tease apart the molecular mechanisms of transcription through nucleosomes. She transitioned to studying the dynamics of epigenetic regulation in live cells during her postdoctoral fellowship with Michael Elowitz at Caltech. She started her own interdisciplinary lab at Stanford in January 2017.