Kavitha Sarma is an associate professor in the Gene Expression and Regulation Program at the Wistar Institute. She is also a core member of the Epigenetics Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an expert in both chromatin and noncoding RNA biology, having extensively studied eukaryotic gene regulation and mammalian dosage compensation.

Sarma started her independent research group at the Wistar Institute in 2016 and received the National Institutes of Health New Innovator Award in 2017 for her proposal to study R-loops. Her laboratory currently explores RNA function in epigenetic gene regulation and in the formation of atypical chromatin structures in disease.