our Team
Micky Edmonds
Dr. Edmonds obtained both his B.S. and M.S. in Molecular Biology from Washington State University in Pullman, WA and Ph.D in Molecular and Cellular Pathology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2011 he joined the laboratory of Dr. Christine Eischen, Division of Investigative Pathology at Vanderbilt Medical Center, to conduct his postdoctoral studies. Dr. Edmonds’ thesis work focused on elucidating the complex transcriptional and epigenetic events required for breast cancer metastasis. He received many awards and a Department of Defense pre-doctoral fellowship during his thesis studies. During his postdoctoral studies and training he focused on identifying novel initiators and drivers of human lung cancer, using patient lung tumors and genetically engineered mouse models. While training here at Vanderbilt, he was awarded a National Research Service Award (NRSA) and an American Cancer Society and Kirby Foundation Postdoctoral fellowship. Dr. Edmonds is now tenure track faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the Department of Genetics and holds secondary appointments in the Cancer Center, Pathology Department, and HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology.
Mackenzie Davenport
Mackenzie is from Columbia, TN, and completed her B.S. in Biology at East Tennessee State University, where she graduated summa cum laude in 2016. She joined the Edmonds’ laboratory in March 2017. Her thesis work focuses on targeting oncogenic non-coding RNAs in lung cancer. She attended the Cold Spring Harbor Mouse Development, Stem Cells, and Cancer course during the summer of 2019. Since joining the Edmonds’ laboratory her work has been supported by two T32 training grants, one in Lung Diseases and one in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology.
Courtney Barkley
Courtney received a B.S. in Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. As an undergraduate, she worked with postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Sarah Peters, on investigating signaling pathways that regulate developmental tooth innervation. She is now a research assistant in the Edmonds lab helping study the role of non-coding RNAs in cancer processes.
Mara Davis
She is from Helena, Alabama and is currently pursuing a bachelors in Genetics and Genomic Sciences at UAB. She joined the lab in 2018 and looks at noncoding RNAs in breast cancer.
Erin McCoy
Erin was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She obtained a BS in 2007 from Mississippi State University with a double major in Biological Sciences and Microbiology. She came to the University of Alabama at Birmingham as a Howard Hughes Med-to-Grad fellow and obtained a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Pathology in 2012 with a focus on cancer metastasis. She joined the Edmonds lab in 2017 as senior scientist and is instrumental in laboratory operations such as grant writing, experimental design, laboratory regulation/compliance and management of personnel.
Baylea Davenport
Baylea is from Columbia, TN and received a B.S. in Biology from East Tennessee State University in 2019. As an undergraduate, her research focused on characterizing proteins involved in the salicylic acid pathway in Nicotiana tobacum in Dr. Dhirendra Kumar’s plant biochemistry lab. Along with this she participated in an NSF REU program, conducting research in Dr. Gwendalyn King’s lab at UAB studying the role of Klotho in the neurodegeneration process. She joined the Edmonds’ laboratory in January of 2020 as a researcher helping study the role of non-coding RNAs in cancer.
Jeffrey De Meis
Jeffery is from the Birmingham Alabama area. He has graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology, from the University of South Alabama. during his undergraduate study he fell in love with biomedical research, particularly with regard to noncoding RNA and their role in cancer metastasis. Research is his passion and he is now working on a PhD in Genetics, Genomics, and Bioinformatics from UAB.