Shannon Macauley

Shannon L. Macauley, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Physiology at the University of Kentucky and a member of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, where she leads a research program focused on the role of metabolic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease. Her work seeks to define how amyloid and tau pathology alter brain metabolism and how these metabolic changes drive early sleep disruption, neuroinflammation, vascular dysfunction, and disease progression. Prior to establishing her own laboratory, Dr. Macauley received her PhD in neuroscience and completed postdoctoral training at Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied neurodegenerative diseases, brain metabolism, and CNS therapeutics. She subsequently launched her independent research program at Wake Forest School of Medicine before relocating her laboratory to the University of Kentucky in 2023. Her research integrates in vivo physiology, metabolomics, and multi-scale imaging across animal models and human datasets to identify novel therapeutic strategies to restore metabolic flexibility, reduce pathology, and rescue sleep.