Minni (Minna-Liisa) Änkö is a group leader at the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Monash University in Melbourne. Minni obtained her PhD from the Åbo Akademi University in Finland on a scholarship from the Finnish Graduate School of Neuroscience. From 2006-2011 Minni was a post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Cell Biology and Genetics, in Dresden, Germany. She received the Sigrid Juselius fellowship for her post-doctoral work. Minni arrived in Australia in 2011 when she was awarded the Jane and Aatos Erkko fellowship and was a visiting scientist at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University. She was a senior post-doctoral fellow at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (2012-2013) before moving to her current position at Monash University. Minni’s ‘RNA Processing and Development Laboratory’ focuses in understanding the regulatory role of RNA binding proteins in stem cells, during development and in disease conditions. Her laboratory combines mouse genetics and developmental biology with systems biology approaches to unveil how RNA binding proteins control gene expression programs to dictate the development of a single pluripotent cell into a complex organism with hundreds of different cell types - as well as how these proteins regulate the reverse process during cellular reprogramming.