Wendy M. Olivas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She received her PhD at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona. Her lab studies how members of the Puf family of eukaryotic RNA-binding proteins regulate the lifespans of targeted mRNAs, thus controlling protein production from those mRNAs. Research in the lab has used both the yeast Sachharomyces cerevisiae model system as well as human neural cells to investigate the mechanisms by which Puf proteins stimulate mRNA degradation and the pathways that regulate Puf protein activity in response to varying environmental and cellular signals.