Dr. Sarah Elgin, Professor of Biology and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, as well as Professor of Education at Washington University in St. Louis, received her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. Following postdoctoral research with Dr. Leroy Hood, at Caltech, she moved to a faculty position at Harvard and later to her current position at Washington University.  She is an accomplished scientist with research interests centered on the role that chromatin structure plays in gene regulation, both effects from packaging large domains and local effects of the nucleosome array. In utilizing the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster, her work with her students have 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).
In addition to her numerous scientific contributions, Dr. Elgin has served as director for Washington University’s HHMI Undergraduate Biological Science Education Program since 1992. In this role, she has developed 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–12 teachers, taught jointly by scientists and expert teachers. 
Visit the following websites to find out more about Dr. Elgin and her research interests http://www.biology.wustl.edu/faculty/FacultyPage.php?IDProf=11
or outreach activities http://www.hhmi.org/research/professors/elgin_bio.html