Dr. Madelyn Houser is a Research track Assistant Professor affiliated with the Center for  Data Science in the School of Nursing. She is experienced in clinical,  preclinical, and basic research and specializes in conducting reproducible  analyses of large data sets such as those generated in omics studies.
 
 Madelyn earned a BS in Biological Sciences with an honors concentration in  Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology with additional coursework in  microbiology at the University of Tennessee. She also worked full-time in  laboratory research studying structure-function relationships in G  protein-coupled receptors as well as the effects of climate change on an  agricultural fungal pathogen. Madelyn then earned her Ph.D. in Immunology and  Molecular Pathogenesis from Emory’s Laney Graduate School. Her dissertation  demonstrated the potential for intestinal inflammation to contribute to the  development of Parkinson’s disease. In studying the interactions of complex  biological systems, Madelyn came to recognize the power of sophisticated  computational research tools, and so she accepted a postdoc position with Dr. Vicki Hertzberg in the SON Center for Data Science where she trained in R  programming, advanced statistical methods, and omics data analysis.
 
 Madelyn handles data from numerous research projects on subjects ranging from  mechanisms of heat-related illness and kidney disease in agricultural workers  to gut-brain connections in ALS and Alzheimer’s disease to factors which  contribute to symptom severity in Black individuals living with multiple  chronic health conditions. Often her studies involve microbiome, metabolomics, and inflammation-related data, but she is fascinated by any  research question that allows her to integrate her scientific knowledge and  her analytical skillset to investigate complex physiological systems and  their role in health and disease.

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