Dr. McCown joined the MiKTMC team after completing his postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Notre Dame in the lab of Professor Jessica Brown. There, he assembled the first predicted secondary structure of the human long noncoding RNA MALAT1, which has significant roles in cancer progression and metastasis and is implicated in having roles in acute kidney injury.

While also at Notre Dame, he compiled an exhaustive review of every known naturally occurring RNA modification. Prior to his time at Notre Dame, Dr. McCown completed his Ph.D. from Yale University, under the direction of Professor Ronald R. Breaker. While there, he conducted extensive computational and biochemical analyses on riboswitches and ribozymes. Prior to Yale, he completed a B.S. and M.S. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Dr. McCown is excited to be back at his alma mater, where he will be contributing his talents and analytic efforts in ongoing analyses within the group on chronic kidney disease and on the roles and involvement of RNA in these processes.