New recruits join population health, nursing, medicine faculty

Medical Center leadership is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff.

Jeremy Duncan, Ph.D.

Dr. Jeremy Duncan, recently a postdoctoral research fellow in the UMMC Department of Physiology and Biophysics, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an instructor in physiology.

After receiving his B.A. in psychology at the University of West Georgia, Carrollton, in 2006, Duncan earned his M.S. in biomedical science in 2010 and his Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2015 at UMMC, where he had his postdoctoral research fellowship from 2015-18.

An active member of the Society for Neuroscience, the American Heart Association and the American Physiological Association, Duncan was the 2018 recipient of the Caroline tum Suden/Frances Hellebrandt Professional Opportunity Award. A reviewer for BMC Genomics, the Annals of Clinical and Experimental Hypertension and the Journal of Hypertension and Management, he is the author or coauthor of 10 articles in peer-reviewed publications and 19 scientific abstracts.

William B. Hillegass, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. William B. Hillegass, associate professor of cardiovascular medicine and assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of medicine and an associate professor of data science in the John D. Bower School of Population Health.

After receiving his B.A. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry and his B.A. in economics and political science magna cum laude from Yale University in 1983, Hillegass earned his M.D. magna cum laude at Harvard Medical School and his Master of Public Health focusing on biostatistics and research methods at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1988. He earned his Ph.D. in biostatistics at the UAB School of Public Health in 2017.

He had a medicine residency from 1988-90 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, and a general, interventional and endovascular cardiovascular and Duke Clinical Research Institute fellowship from 1990-94 at Duke University Medical Center before joining the Vanderbilt University Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of medicine in 1995.

From 2000-18, Hillegass served as an assistant and then associate professor of medicine in the Cardiovascular Division at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and assistant professor of biostatistics. He was the Interventional Cardiovascular Fellowship program director from 2005-10 at UAB. He was also in private cardiology practice with the Heart South Cardiovascular Group, Alabaster, Alabama, and a cardiovascular researcher, consultant and educator at Columbiana Cardiovascular Research Consulting, Alabama, from 2011-17.

A subject content and statistical reviewer for several scientific journals, Hillegass serves on the editorial board of Cardiovascular Catheterization and Interventions. A fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the Society of Vascular Medicine and Biology and the Society of Cardiac Angiography and Intervention, he is the author or coauthor of more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed professional publications, eight book chapters and more than 60 published abstracts. He has obtained close to $10 million in grant, foundation and industry extramural support for multiple research projects, clinical trials and training programs since 1995.

Hillegass’ applied research has focused on coronary, structural and peripheral cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and anti-thrombotic therapies. His basic statistical research concerns indirect treatment effect estimators such as network meta-analysis, as well as optimizing experimental, study and clinical trial design with methods ranging from simulation to machine learning. Hillegass’ teaching focus, including a new UMMC Data Science course, is study design and analysis for both experimental and observational research.

Presly Lowry, M.S.N.

Presly Lowry, a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit nurse at UMMC, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an instructor in nursing.

Lowry received her B.S.N. in 2014 and her M.S.N. in 2018 at UMMC. She received her R.N. licensure from the Mississippi Board of Nursing in 2014.

Lowry is a member of Sigma Theta Tau Honor Society, the American Nurses Association, the American Association of Critical Care Nurses and the Mississippi Nursing Association.

Alan J. Mouton, Ph.D.

Dr. Alan J. Mouton, a postdoctoral researcher in the UMMC Department of Physiology and Biophysics, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an instructor in physiology.

After receiving his B.S. in biochemistry from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, in 2011, Mouton earned his Ph.D. at the LSU Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, in 2017. He then became a postdoctoral researcher at UMMC.

An active member of the American Physiological Society, the American Heart Association and the American Society for Matrix Biology, Mouton is the author or coauthor of 15 articles in peer-reviewed publications and 16 scientific abstracts and has given nine presentations at scientific meetings nationally. He has also been an invited manuscript reviewer for the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy, and the American Journal of Physiology: Physiological Genomics.

His research interests include effects of chronic alcohol abuse on the progression of cardiac remodeling, obesity, cardiorenal diseases and myocardial infarction.

Robert O’Brien, Ph.D.

Dr. Robert O’Brien, a biostatistician at the Jaeb Center for Health Research, Tampa, Florida, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of data science in the John D. Bower School of Population Health.

After receiving his B.S. in mathematics from California State University, Chico, in 2002, O’Brien earned his M.S. in statistics at the University of California, San Diego, in 2008. He served as an assistant statistician at the University of California, San Diego and Davis, from 2008-09 and as a biostatistician at the University of Miami, Florida, from 2010-15 and at the Jaeb Center for Health Research from 2016-18. He earned his Ph.D. in biostatistics at the University of Miami in 2018.

O’Brien is the author or coauthor of more than 10 articles in peer-reviewed publications.