“I was in an extremely fortunate position to have the training and resources to say, well I could switch my career and work on this problem,” Melton said. “This isn’t like I was an economist or a physicist where I really had to change everything. I was already studying animal development. I switched to how you maintain an organism in its adult form. How is the pancreas not only made, but maintained and, with these pancreatic insulin-producing cells, these beta cells, how can we make more of them?”

Photo by B. D. Colen/ADIOL