Ersin Akinci and Sneha Dutta

Ersin Akinci, Ph.D., is a member of the Sherwood Lab. Ersin completed his PhD at the University of Minnesota in the Slack Lab by working on differentiation of different cell types into pancreatic beta cells. After joining the Sherwood Lab in 2019, his research focuses on identifying possible transcriptional activator and repressor peptides by using CRISPRa tool in order to study pancreatic programming of pluripotent stem cells.

Sneha Dutta is a G5 graduate student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health program, and a member of the Mair Lab. Her research focuses on understanding the role of RNA splicing in healthy aging. By combining C. elegans and mammalian cell culture studies, she has unraveled interesting links between various metabolic pathways implicated in longevity and the components of the RNA splicing machinery.