Our Mission

Our purpose is clear: to retain El Paso’s exceptional talent, expand STEM education for underrepresented communities, and empower local innovators to lead the future of science and technology.

Bringing world-class technology to el Paso, laboratories will be the doorway to a new era of scientists and engineers. We will provide all the tools the next generation needs to thrive in the real world.

Our Values

At ROOTS, dedication and passion for science set our standard, and our compass is community anchored in El Paso and oriented to meaningful contributions in space and biosciences. We uphold the principle of family as belonging and mutual support, creating an environment where people feel seen, safe, and expected to grow. We prize bold thinking and disciplined experimentation, inviting ideas that challenge convention and backing them with rigor, safety, and transparency. Our values are the groundwork for what we are building: world-class laboratories, open pathways to real careers, and an innovation culture that reflects the best of El Paso while reaching confidently beyond it.

Built in El Paso.

The Founders

Karen Castañeda

Karen Castañeda, M.S. Biomedical Engineering is the CEO of ROOTS Laboratories and a recognized leader in pharmaceutical analytical development. At Johnson & Johnson, BioNTech, Sanofi, and Thermo Fisher Scientific, she has led cross-functional teams to design, optimize (DoE), and validate high-stakes methods spanning UHPLC-MS, cIEF/CE, stability-indicating assays, and impurity/degradation profiling and to tech-transfer them from R&D to GMP manufacturing with uncompromising FDA/ICH, USP, and European compliance. Now a Lead Scientist at Asymchem, Karen architects end-to-end analytical strategies that de-risk CMC, accelerate Phase I readiness, and withstand audits through rigorous data-integrity (ALCOA+) and documentation. An active ISPE and PBSS member with a patent and peer-reviewed publication, she channels this executional rigor into ROOTS building world-class labs, mentoring the next generation in El Paso, and turning precise analytics into real therapies.

Alai Lopez

Alai Lopez, B.S. Mechanical Engineering (UTEP); MIT AeroAstro (ASP) is a space-systems mechanical engineer and team lead known for turning bold concepts into flight-ready hardware. He is currently pursuing a Master’s in Aeronautics & Astronautics at MIT and is a Lincoln Laboratory Scholar, one of the institute’s most prestigious awards. At MIT Lincoln Laboratory, he has co-led the development of a shape-memory-alloy (SMA) thermal switch from strategy through prototyping toward TRL-3, engineered and delivered deployable antenna payloads for the AERO-VISTA CubeSat from CAD to successful prototype testing, and contributed telescope and optical-payload concepts selected for further NASA Marconi study. His work spans mechanism design, thermal/structural FEA, qualification testing, and integration, backed by hands-on proficiency in SolidWorks/NX, Abaqus/ANSYS, MATLAB, LabVIEW, and lab instrumentation. Alai has led release-mechanism evaluations and harness integration for flight builds, and published on deployable vector-sensor antennas in AIAA SciTech and IEEE with a throughline mission to deliver dependable on-orbit capability, faster.

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