Courtney Thaxton, PhD was promoted to Associate Professor, effective July 1, 2024.
Dr. Thaxton received her BS in Molecular Biology and Microbiology (2002) and her PhD in Biomolecular Sciences (2007) from The University of Central Florida. She then completed two postdoctoral fellowships at UNC-Chapel Hill: one in the laboratory of Dr. Manzoor Bhat (2008-2012) and one in the laboratory of Dr. Benjamin Philpot (2012-2014). She was appointed as a Research Associate in the Philpot lab (2014-2016) before joining the research group of Dr. Jonathan Berg as a Social/Clinical Research Associate (2016-2020). Dr. Thaxton was appointed as Research Assistant Professor on April 1, 2020, and named the Director of the UNC Biocuration and Coordination Core.
Dr. Thaxton’s research is focused on the data used for classifying genes and variants involved in monogenic diseases and to find ways to reduce the burden of identifying applicable evidence for gene causation. She works on the development and refinement of computational methods to assist in biocuration and helps to develop frameworks and guidelines for gene-disease validity as well as definitions and nomenclature for monogenic diseases to enable accurate curations. Dr. Thaxton has contributed significantly to the creation of a protocol to focus biocurators on systematically annotating evidence from published literature, saving time and providing a means for computational extraction. She hopes to expand these efforts to include the extraction and identification of additional evidence items of interest for gene-disease validity and variant pathogenicity.