Elaine Cowan is a Postdoctoral Fellow within the Diabetes Islet Cell Exocytosis Research group at Lund University Diabetes Centre (LUDC). She is a Biomedical Sciences graduate (2002) with a Masters of Research in Diabetes from Ulster University, UK (2003) and PhD in Obesity/Diabetes from Queen´s University Belfast, UK (2016). Her previous research primarily focused on the role of gut peptides in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and the impact of mitochondrial dysfunction on pancreatic ß-cell metabolism. Her current research aims to identify miRNAs that regulate mitohondrial genes important in T2D and functionally evaluate the impact of changes in their expression in pancreatic α &/or β-cell models. Another goal of her current research is to globally profile miRNAs in human islet cells and perform miRNA-RNA interaction analysis studies in the same.