ABOVE: Lexi Coon/University of Alabama at Birmingham
Michelle Gray says her mother knew never to tell her a story unless she could account for every detail. “If you told me one sentence, I was going to ask you another question,” Gray says. “I was always in pursuit of more knowledge.”
Gray grew up in Alabama and attended Alabama State University, earning her bachelor’s degree in biology in 1997. She then headed to Ohio State University for her PhD and chose to work alongside neurobiologist Christine Beattie on the startle response of zebrafish. Gray and Beattie’s experiments showed that the neural circuits involved in the response are malleable, which might have been essential in the evolution of predator avoidance.
Having studied the development of neurons, Gray realized that she wanted to apply her knowledge to study the other end of the cell cycle: neurodegeneration. The topic was quite a pivot from ...
