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Dr. Elgin is Viktor Hamburger Professor of Arts and Sciences and a professor of biology, professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, professor of genetics, and professor of education at Washington University in St. Louis. She graduated from Pomona College with a B.S. in chemistry and received a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, working in the laboratory of James Bonner, exploring the role of nonhistone chromosomal proteins. She did postdoctoral research with Leroy Hood, also at Caltech. With Hood, she developed tools to characterize chromatin in Drosophila. After a move to a faculty position at Harvard, work with her students led to a method to determine the distribution of specific proteins in the polytene chromosomes by using immunofluorescence and to methods for analyzing the nucleosome array, including identification of accessible regulatory sites (HS sites). After her appointment to the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Elgin served as director of the university's HHMI Undergraduate Biological Science Education Program. In addition, she began a Science Education Partnership with her children’s school district in the late 1980s, which has led to the development of materials for high school teachers to use to integrate teaching of DNA science and information on the Human Genome Project into their genetics unit and to the development of hands-on science courses for K–8 teachers, taught jointly by scientists and expert teachers. Dr. Elgin currently serves on the editorial boards of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Molecular Cell, and Current Opinion in Genetics and Development, and she is a senior editor of Cell Biology Education–Life Sciences Education. She is also a member of the University City Science Advisory Council. In 2006 she was corecipient of the Bruce Alberts Award for Excellence in Science Education from the American Society for Cell Biology, and in 2007 she received the Award for Exemplary Contributions to Education from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
RESEARCH ABSTRACT SUMMARY:
Sarah Elgin's research focuses on the role of chromatin structure in gene regulation in fruit flies. Her HHMI project involves developing curricula and multimedia materials that bring the concepts of genomics to the undergraduate and high school settings and help students become comfortable in using large data sets as a research tool in biology.
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Photo: Joe Angeles/WUSTL
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