Associate Professor, Dept of Physiology, University of Kentucky

Adjunct Associate Professor, Dept of Physiology & Pharmacology, Wake Forest School of Med

Education/Training: BA, Middlebury College; PhD, Washington University School of Medicine; Postdoctoral Fellowship, Washington University School of Medicine
 

Shannon L. Macauley earned her BA in Biology and Psychology from Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT) and worked in translational neuroscience at Genzyme Corporation (Boston, MA) prior to graduate school.  Dr. Macauley completed her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Washington University (St. Louis, MO) with Dr. Mark Sands and her postdoctoral training in Alzheimer’s disease in the laboratory of Dr. David Holtzman at Washington University (St. Louis, MO).  Dr. Macauley joined the Sticht Center for Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention at Wake Forest Baptist Health as an Assistant Professor in August 2017. Dr. Macauley was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in 2022. She recently moved her lab to University of Kentucky in June of 2023.

 

The goal of Dr. Macauley’s research is to understand central nervous system (CNS) disease and how mechanistic drivers of neuronal dysfunction, such as metabolic dysfunction, sleep impairment, vascular damage, and neuroinflammation, can be targeted therapeutically,  To date, her work has focused on two main areas: first, the study of mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disease and the development of CNS therapeutics as it relates to lysosomal storage diseases.  Second, the exploration of the link between type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, how metabolic challenges affect normal brain function in health and disease, and how metabolic dysfunction can be targeted as a therapeutic approach for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes.