DR. AUSTIN REYNOLDS
PI - Assistant Professor
Education: Postdoc University of California, Davis
Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin
B.A. Indiana University, Bloomington
DR. STACY EDINGTON
Postdoctoral Researcher
Stacy is a postdoc in the Reynolds lab interested in human-pathogen coevolution and using genomics to measure population disease risk. She is currently working on population disease risk and immune response differences between hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist populations in South Africa.
Celia Cleary
PhD Student
Celia is a PhD student in the Reynolds Lab, interested in investigating how forces of early urbanism and the built environment affect the genetic landscape across space and time in ancient Maya cities. She recently completed an M.A. in Anthropology at George Mason University, and completed her undergraduate studies in Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Tamara Fischer
PhD Student
Tamara is a 5th year PhD candidate and NIH T32 fellow in the Reynolds lab whose research focuses on understanding the molecular factors underlying Alzheimer’s disease, with an emphasis on how these processes may differ across racial and ethnic populations. Her research investigates DNA methylation and plasma metabolic profiles associated with established AD biomarkers in Mexican American and non-Hispanic White adults, with the goal of improving our understanding environmental and metabolic influences on AD and identifying population-relevant biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets.
Kahylen Minniefield
PhD Student
Kahylen is a second year PhD student and NIH T32 fellow in the lab working on questions around genetic ancestry, epigenetic aging, and Alzheimer's risk.
Brooke Morris
PhD Student
Brooke is a graduate student in the Reynolds lab whose research focuses on genomic architecture of rare and common autoimmune diseases and how casual genes might differ depending on ancestral population groups. Her project is using genomes from a large biobank to look for causal genes, variants and if they share genetic architecture with other autoimmune diseases. Her undergraduate studies were in Forensic Anthropology and Biology.
Ameen Ali
DO Student
Ameen is a medical student in UNT Health’s Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine. His work focuses on analyzing biomarkers and demographics data related to Alzheimer’s disease between rural and urban cohorts.
Ishan Rereddy
Med Sci Master's Student
Ishan is a Master's Student in the Medical Sciences program at UNT Health. He is working on the portability of polygenic risk scores for Alzheimer's and related endophenotypes across genetic ancestries.
Former Lab Members
Mackenzie Smith (Undergraduate) 2021 - Went on to a PhD program at Vanderbilt
Savannah Knutson (Undergraduate) 2022 - Went on to a PhD program at UPenn
Paige Plattner (Master's) 2024 - Went on to an OTD program at Western Oregon University
Fernanda Mirón (Master's) 2025 - Went on to a PhD program at Queen Mary's University London