Team

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

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.