Our research focuses on developing approaches for assaying and integrating omics data, functional annotations, and patient information to discover novel mechanisms in disease etiology and progression, therapeutic targets, and circulating biomarkers.
Current Members
Brittany Lasseigne, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor
Dr. Lasseigne is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology, an Associate Scientist in both the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center Experimental Therapeutics Program and the Center for Clinical and Translational Science, and a Scientist in both the Informatics Institute and the Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She previously completed a BS in Biological Engineering at Mississippi State University, an interdisciplinary biology, chemistry, and chemical engineering PhD in Biotechnology Science and Engineering from The University of Alabama in Huntsville, and a postdoctoral fellowship in genetics and genomics at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. Brittany is passionate about developing and applying genomics technologies to human diseases and teaching data science to students and scientists of all backgrounds.
Brittany's Publications and Grants
bnp0001[@]uab.edu
Anisha Haldar
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Anisha is an undergraduate research assistant majoring in Immunology and is part of the Personalized Honors Program and the Early Medical School Acceptance Program at UAB. She has previously contributed to projects relating to wound healing, the impact of hormonal therapy on the microbiome, and transcription activation and repression in neuron development. In the Lasseigne Lab, Anisha is contributing to cross-species and network genomics analyses.
Avery Williams
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Avery is an undergraduate research assistant majoring in Genetics and Genomic Sciences and a part of the Science and Technology honors program. She is responsible for the lab website and collaborates on multiple projects for the lab. Her current focus is working with comprehensive Glioblastoma RNA profiles to identify optimal research model systems and patient avatars, as well as understand Glioblastoma-associated blood and brain gene expression profiles.
Emily Page
Research Assistant / Grad PREP Scholar
Emily is in the Graduate PREP Scholars program at UAB, which is a one year training program for students who are seeking graduate degrees in the biomedical sciences. She earned her B.S. in Biology, majoring in Biomedical Sciences from University of Alabama at Birmingham. Some of her favorite previous work included Corynebacterium Bacteriophage gene analysis and color Gene analysis of Glacier Bears.
Jen Fisher
Graduate Research Assistant
Jen is a current Ph.D. student in the Genomics, Genetics, and Bioinformatics theme within the UAB Graduate Biomedical Sciences program. She is supported by UAB’s AMC21 Scholars program. In 2019, She earned a B.S. in Biological Engineering with a minor in Mathematics from Mississippi State University. Jen is currently applying machine learning approaches to uncover biomarkers for drug repurposing, liquid biopsies, rare diseases, and chromosomal instability.
Jordan Whitlock
Graduate Research Assistant
Jordan is a current Ph.D. student in the Genetics, Genomics and Bioinformatics theme within the UAB Graduate Biomedical Sciences program. She has a B.S. in Genetics and Genomic Sciences from UAB. Her projects and interests focus on developing and applying disease-agnostic computational approaches to understand the role of context dependency across and within disease. Jordan has a particular heart for rare diseases. She is currently investigating why context matters within ciliopathy and autophagy associated disorders.
Kasi McPherson, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Kasi is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the IRACDA-MERIT Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She obtained her PhD in Medical Pharmacology from University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson MS where her research projected was focused on testing pharmacological agents as potential treatments of obesity related kidney disease using a novel genetic rat model of obesity. Her current research interest includes application of data science-based methods to identify therapeutic targets for cardiovascular diseases, particularly in high-risk population.
Lizzy Ramsey
Researcher III and Lab Manager
Lizzy earned her B.S. in Biology with a minor in Chemistry from the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Prior to working at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, she applied genomics technologies such as RNA-Seq for understanding cancer and chemotherapy resistance as a research assistant. In her current role as Lasseigne lab manager and staff scientist, she analyzes, integrates, and interprets genomics data for multiple disease projects aimed at understanding disease biology and identify biomarkers.
Sasha Thalluri
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Sasha is an honors undergraduate student majoring in Genetics and Genomic Sciences at UAB. She is a part of our chromosomal instabilities project, which is geared towards gathering and analyzing genomics data to create predictive models of human cancer. She is currently applying computational approaches to determine chromosomal instability across human cancers in relation to cell proliferation. Sasha is also working on how to compare mouse and human genomics data sets.
Tabea Soelter
Graduate Research Assistant
Tabea is a current Ph.D. student in the Genetics, Genomics and Bioinformatics theme within the UAB Graduate Biomedical Sciences program. She has a B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology from Piedmont College. Tabea's interests are widespread with particular curiosity for aging-related processes in disease. She is currently working on establishing age-associated signatures across cancers with telomerase promoter mutations using computational approaches.
TC Howton, Ph.D.
Researcher III and Lab Manager
T.C. earned his PhD in Biology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. During his doctoral studies, T.C. focused on using network-based approaches to elucidate the molecular interactions between plants and bacterial pathogens. T.C. is currently serving as a lab manager as well as research scientist within the Lasseigne lab.
Vishal Oza, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Vishal is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He got his PhD from University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa where he developed methods for constructing network models of Drosophila melanogaster metabolome from untargeted metabolomics data. His research interests include analyzing high dimensional biological data using machine learning and network theory. His current research involves multiomics data integration in cancer and developing network based approaches to compare n=1 patient profiles.
Zachary Sanders
Graduate Rotation Student
Zachary is a student in the Master of Science in Multidisciplinary Biomedical Science program (MSMBS) at UAB. He earned a B.S. in psychology with a minor in sociology and chemistry. His research interests are currently focused on in-silico research on chromosomal instabilities.
Our Alumni
Roshan Darji
Computational Biologist (2019)
Currently: Department of Biostatistics, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
Randi Wood
Researcher IV and Lab Manager (2019-2020)
Drew Hardigan. Ph.D.
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow (2020)
Currently: Neurosurgery Resident, Duke University
Past Rotation Students
Jack Hoover (2020)
Shaurita Hutchins (2020)