Curriculum Vitae
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow | Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin | |
| clstacy.github.io | orcid.org/0000-0002-8817-574X | linkedin.com/in/carson-stacy |
Professional Experience
Postdoctoral Research Fellow — Jan 2026 – Present
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), Dublin, Ireland
School of Pharmacy & Biomolecular Sciences, Das Lab
- Develop and validate DNA methylation-based machine-learning classifiers for rare sinonasal tumors, including metastasis prediction.
- Integrate bulk methylation with single-cell data (scRNA-seq, scATAC-seq) and histology (whole-slide imaging) to improve tumor microenvironment deconvolution and interpretability.
- Mentor a work-study student in the Precision Medicine program on histology whole-slide image segmentation for cancer subtype prediction.
Education
Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology — University of Arkansas, December 2025
Concentration: Bioinformatics | GPA 4.0/4.0
Dissertation: Phenotypic Association of Pan-Genomic Transcriptional Signatures Reveal Genomic Determinants of Natural Variation in Stress Response and Survival. Advisor: Jeffrey Lewis.
M.S. in Statistics and Analytics — University of Arkansas, May 2025
Concentration: Statistics | GPA 3.9/4.0
Thesis: Application of Ordinal Regression Models to Acquired Stress Resistance in Wild Strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Advisor: Qingyang Zhang.
B.S. in Anthropology — University of Arkansas, May 2017
Minor: Biological Sciences | GPA 4.0/4.0
Research Interests
I develop and apply statistical models and machine-learning methods to make sense of high-dimensional biological data, with an emphasis on interpretability and reproducibility. My methodological interests include ordinal and multinomial regression, regularized and hierarchical models, and predictive modeling for genomic and epigenomic data. Building on my experience integrating CRISPR screens with large-scale transcriptomic data in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, I now apply these approaches to identify biomarkers of disease progression and resilience — integrating DNA methylation, histone modifications, and scATAC-seq to predict metastasis in rare sinonasal cancers — with the broader goal of turning complex data into decisions that inform precision medicine.
Publications
Journal articles
Jordan, A., Caffrey, A., Stacy, C., Huang, R. Y., Tan, T. Z., McCabe, A., Dean, K., Das, S., & Perry, A. S. (2026). Genome-wide assessment of DNA methylation fidelity identifies representative ovarian cancer cell line models. Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, 30(16), e71334.
VanDyke, L., Mantooth, R., Stacy, C. L., Robinson, S., Fischer, P., Mosley, C., Beauford, H., & Jensen, H. (2026). Bicycle-related trauma trends in a region of expanding cycling infrastructure. The American Surgeon, 92(6), 1630–1636.
Sauer, E. L.†, Stacy, C. L.†, Perrine, W., Love, A. C., Lewis, J. A., & DuRant, S. E. (2025). Diet driven differences in host tolerance are linked to shifts in global gene expression in a common avian host-pathogen system. Molecular Ecology, 34(12), e17793. †Co-first author.
Scholes, A. N., Stuecker, T. N., Hood, S. E., Locke, C. J., Stacy, C. L., Zhang, Q., & Lewis, J. A. (2024). Natural variation in yeast reveals multiple paths for acquiring higher stress resistance. BMC Biology, 22(1), 149.
Furr, M., Badiee, S. A., Basha, S., Agrawal, S., Alraawi, Z., Heng, S., Stacy, C. L., Ahmed, Y., Moradi, M., Kumar, T. K. S., & Ceballos, R. M. (2024). Structural stability comparisons between natural and engineered group II chaperonins. Microorganisms, 12(11), 2348.
Ceballos, R. M., & Stacy, C. L. (2021). Quantifying relative virulence: when μmax fails and AUC alone just is not enough. Journal of General Virology, 102(1), 001515.
Ceballos, R. M., Drummond, C. G., Stacy, C. L., Padilla-Crespo, E., & Stedman, K. M. (2020). Host-dependent differences in replication strategy of the Sulfolobus spindle-shaped virus strain SSV9 (aka, SSVK1). Frontiers in Microbiology, 11, 1218.
Preprints
Stacy, C. L., Scholes, A. N., Stuecker, T. N., Hood, S. E., Crook, C. C., Espana-Pena, M., Paré, A. C., & Lewis, J. A. (2025). Surprising regulatory plasticity for the conserved HOG pathway in diverse Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains. bioRxiv. doi:10.64898/2025.12.28.696518
Stacy, C. L., Lenaduwe, S., Stuecker, T. N., & Lewis, J. A. (2025). MIC: A framework for interpretable analysis of ordinal viability data. *bioRxiv. doi:10.1101/2025.10.13.682067
In Preparation
Stacy, C. L., Hood, S. E., Stuecker, T. N., Sadhu, M. J., & Lewis, J. A. A plasmid-based CRISPR screen identifies novel pan-genomic loci conferring strain-specific resistance to osmotic stress.
Conferences and Posters
Stacy, C. L., & Das, S. (2026). AI in medicine: improving cancer diagnosis. Poster, European Researchers’ Night 2026, RCSI, Dublin, Ireland.
Stacy, C. L., & Das, S. (2026). Post-hoc Bayesian uncertainty for a deployed tumour classifier: calibration and out-of-distribution detection under platform shift. Poster, Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS 2026), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany.
Stacy, C. L., & Das, S. (2026). Precisely wrong: conformal prediction for honest precision oncology. Poster, Machine Learning Summer School on Reliability & Safety (MLSS^R&S 2026), Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.
Stacy, C. L., & Lewis, J. A. (2025). Interpretable ordinal analysis for complex designs in cell and molecular biology. Poster, Joint Statistical Meetings, Nashville, TN.
Zhao, K., Stacy, C. L., Islam, M. A., Robinson, S. E., & Jensen, H. (2025). Mental health, psychotherapeutics, and breast cancer. Arkansas Chapter of the American College of Physicians Conference, Little Rock, AR.
Stacy, C. L., & Lewis, J. A. (2024). Paralogs: an R package for visualizing differential expression of paralogs in KEGG pathways. Poster, KU Center for Genomics Annual Symposium, Lawrence, KS.
Stacy, C. L., Lee, D. E., Brown, J. L., Rosa, M. E., Henry, J. N., Brown, L. A., Perry, R. E. Jr., Washington, T. A., & Greene, N. P. (2014). Effect of lifestyle physical activity and Western diet on genes controlling mitochondrial translation. International Journal of Exercise Science: Conference Proceedings, 11(2).
Teaching Experience
Teaching Assistant — Genomic Data Analysis (Graduate), University of Arkansas — Sp 2023 – Sp 2025
Co-developed and TA’d a graduate-level bioinformatics course covering high-throughput sequencing analysis. Course materials
Teaching Assistant — Human Physiology Laboratory (Undergraduate), University of Arkansas — Sp 2024 – Fa 2024
Instructed weekly lab sessions and developed an R Shiny automated grading calculator to reduce TA workload.
Teaching Assistant — Principles of Biology Laboratory (Undergraduate), University of Arkansas — Fa 2022 – Sp 2023
Led foundational biology labs for non-science majors. Average student evaluation score ~4.8/5.
General Chemistry Teacher (Peace Corps Volunteer) — Kolahun High School, Liberia — May 2017 – Sept 2018
Taught chemistry to grades 10–12 in a resource-limited setting. Developed culturally responsive curriculum, improved national exam pass rates, co-led the Girls Club of Kolahun, and served on the Gender Equity Committee.
Supplemental Instruction Leader — Honors General Chemistry, University of Arkansas — Sp 2015 – Sp 2017
Facilitated peer-led review sessions, trained new SI leaders, and developed active learning workshops.
Open-Source Software
- Paralogs — R package for visualizing paralog expression in KEGG pathways
- MultipoolR — R port of Multipool for bulk segregant data analysis
- WeightedSpectralDifference — R package for far UV circular dichroism analysis
- Yeast KO Doubling Times — Interactive database of yeast knockout strain doubling times
- Stress Assay Scoring App — Blinded image scoring app with preprocessing features
- Genomic Data Analysis Course — Interactive bioinformatics curriculum
Skills
Programming & Software
R (tidyverse, Shiny, tidymodels), Python (pandas, NumPy, Keras, scikit-learn), Unix/Bash, Nextflow (Groovy), Git/GitHub, SLURM/PBS
Familiar: SQL, SAS, TensorFlow, PyTorch, JavaScript
Bioinformatics
Bulk RNA-seq, CRISPR screen design & analysis, NGS pipeline development (short & long read), DNA methylation analysis, scRNA-seq, scATAC-seq, flow cytometry, mass spectrometry proteomics
Statistics & Machine Learning
Ordinal & multinomial regression, regularized regression, random forest, Bayesian hierarchical modeling, MCMC, experimental design & power analysis
Computing
HPC (SLURM & PBS), reproducible research (R Markdown, Quarto, Nextflow CI/CD), data visualization (ggplot2)
Awards & Honors
- Delbert Swartz Endowed Graduate Fellowship — University of Arkansas (2024)
- Distinguished Doctoral Fellow — University of Arkansas (2020–2024)
- Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship — Honorable Mention (2021)
- Phi Beta Kappa — Inducted Spring 2017
- Chancellor’s List & Scholarship (8×) — University of Arkansas (2017)
- Octa Norma High Scholarship — University of Arkansas (2015)
- Cherokee Nation Valedictorian Scholarship (2013)
Service & Leadership
- Elected Facilities Chair & Representative, Graduate-Professional Student Congress, University of Arkansas (2023–2024)
- Elected Graduate Student Congress Representative, Cell & Molecular Biology, University of Arkansas (2022–2024)
- Member, American Statistical Association
- Elected Volunteer Coordinator, Alpha Epsilon Delta honor society (2015)
Last updated: September 2026