Merry-Lynn McDonald

Dr. Merry-Lynn McDonald is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine's Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She is also Director of Integrative 'Omics in the same division. Her academic roles include appointments across multiple UAB schools, including the School of Public Health and Academic Joint Departments in Genetics. Dr. McDonald holds dual faculty status in the School of Medicine and School of Public Health, reflecting her interdisciplinary focus.

Education: PhD in Molecular Biophysics from Baylor College of Medicine, MS in Epidemiology from University of Saskatchewan, and BS in Biochemistry from University of Waterloo. Postdoctoral training at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Network Medicine.

Research Focus: Her work centers on genetic epidemiology of complex traits, particularly COPD cachexia, osteoarthritis, and smoking-related comorbidities. She leads the McDonald Laboratory of Integrative 'Omics, leveraging omics data (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics) to uncover disease mechanisms. Key projects include the Million Veteran Program (MVP), Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed), and Cachexia in COPD Etiology of Low-Lean Muscle (CCELL).

Grants & Funding: Active grants from NIH (K99/R00, NHLBI) and the Parker B. Francis Foundation. Her research explores network medicine approaches to COPD, osteoarthritis prevalence in veterans, and biomarker development for lung disease comorbidities.

Labs/Teams: Directs the Integrative 'Omics Lab, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams across UAB's Lung Health Center, CAMBAC, and the Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC). The lab actively recruits postdoctoral fellows, bioinformaticians, and students with expertise in computational biology and statistical genetics.