Faculty & Staff | Directory | Medical Partnership

Dr. Melissa B. Davis is a native of Albany, Georgia. Her interest in the field of genetics was sparked by a summer research program at The Ohio State University, where she conducted spinal cord regeneration studies in the Tassava Lab in the department of molecular genetics. After her undergraduate studies, Dr. Davis completed her Ph.D. in the department of genetics at UGA in 2003.

Dr. Melissa B. Davis completed a postdoc fellowship with Dr. Kevin White at Yale School of Medicine in 2006. While there, she also served as a teaching coordinator of the Yale School of Medicine Summer Medical Education Program for visiting undergraduates, aiding in the pre-med training of over 300 undergraduates. She completed additional postdoctoral training in functional genomics and cancer disparities at the University of Chicago in 2009. Her work became part of the international ModEnCODE project, to delineate the regulatory elements of genes across the Drosophilia genome. In addition, Dr. Davis was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago's Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research. She began training with the center to conduct breast cancer disparities research under the guidance of Dr. Olufunmilayo Olopade, one of the world's leaders in global health and breast cancer disparities research. Her work with the center includes identification of associations of epigenetic cofactors with breast cancer subtypes that are predominantly found in women of African descent.

Following her postdoctoral training, Davis joined the inaugural GRU/UGA Medical Partnership faculty in 2009 as a genetics professor. Currently she is a tenure-track faculty member with the UGA Department of Genetics and serves in a dual role with the Medical Partnership. Her lab conducts research concerned with the molecular and environmental factors that impact the etiology of breast cancer subtypes. She is also investigating the role of ancestral genetics on predisposition to these tumor types and/or oncogene expression and function. For this work, Davis is collaborating with researchers in the UGA College of Public Health to uncover the environmental factors that impact epigenetic regulation of key metabolism, immunity, and cancer genes.

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Faculty & Staff | Directory | Medical Partnership