Dr. Erica Hutchins is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at the University of California, San Francisco School of Dentistry. She completed her PhD at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where she studied post-transcriptional regulation and RNA-binding proteins during developmental axon outgrowth in the frog. After her graduate training, Dr. Hutchins worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, where she studied the mechanisms of neural crest cell fate choices in the context of craniofacial development. Her independent lab seeks to understand the post-transcriptional control mechanisms that control cranial neural crest development during craniofacial morphogenesis. Through the generous and continued support of NIDCR, Dr. Hutchins has been the recipient of a Kirschstein-NRSA F32 postdoctoral fellowship (2016-2019), a Loan Repayment Program (LRP) for Pediatric Research award (2018-present), and the K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award (2019-present). Dr. Hutchins has also recently received the prestigious Early-Stage Investigator Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award, a five-year $2M grant from NIGMS.