Dr. Pei Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Systems and Anatomy at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the East China University of Science and Technology in 1990 and her Master’s degree in Cell Biology from the Shanghai Institute of Cell Biology in 1993. She completed her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine in 2004. She then pursued postdoctoral training at Stanford University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Wang serves on the Equipment Committee, the Master Student Admissions Committee at UTHSCSA, and the Faculty Forward Committee. Her research interests include stem cells, definitive endoderm, the Hippo pathway, and pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Manjeet K. Rao received his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Delhi. He completed his postdoctoral training at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, where he pioneered the in vivo RNA interference (RNAi) approach, a method that can silence virtually any gene in a tissue-specific manner. Currently, he is a Professor and Deputy Director of the Greehey Children's Cancer Research Institute in the Department of Cell Systems and Anatomy at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He holds the Greehey Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Hematologic Malignancies and serves as a Co-Leader of the Experimental and Developmental Therapeutics Program at Mays Cancer Center. His research focuses on understanding the role of genetic and epigenetic modifiers in development and oncogenesis. Dr. Rao’s team has made numerous seminal discoveries in the field of cancer, leading to clinical trials and publications in top-tier journals including Cell, PNAS, Nature Communications, and Science Advances. He has successfully competed for extramural grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, and private foundations.
