Hayden Malone's ceaseless curiosity of how things work steered her early interest in science and still fuels her passion for cormatin and cancer biology. Her goal is to contribute to discoveries that impact the collective knowledge of biology and treatment of disease. She is specifically interested in the fundamental mechanisms that regulate gene expression in cells to control development and response to environmental stimuli, and how dysregulation can cause disease.
Malone earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 2018 from the University of Mississippi in Oxford. While there, she studied the transcriptional regulatory network that allows plants to shed their leaves and flowers for her thesis at the Sally McDonnel Barksdale Honors College. After this experience she was eager to study new ways cells gene expression is regulated, leading her to join the lab of Charles Roberts, MD, PhD, Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, Department of Oncology at St. Jude as a research technologist in 2018. During this time, she studied how the BAF complex, an ATP-dependent chromatin remodeler, regulates transcription and how perturbations in the complex cause disease. She was impressed with the research, resources and opportunities at the St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and is thrilled to return to the Roberts Lab for her thesis work. Here, she will investigate novel regulators of BAF complex function and their role in disease.
“I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to impact others through scientific discovery,” she says, “As much as we want to be successful scientists ourselves, it is important that we ground our work in the service to others. Commitment to service is the driving force of St. Jude, and I can’t think of a better environment to continue my scientific training.”
Hometown: Huntsville, AL and Corinth, MS