Dr. Huckaba earned a B.S. in Biology and Political Science from the University of Oregon in 1994, an M.S. in Physiology from the Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University in 2000, and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2006. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute – Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellow during his postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco, where he worked in the laboratory of Dr. Ronald Vale on the mechanism of activity of a monomeric cellular transport motor, called Kinesin-73. After completing his postdoctoral work, he joined the faculty in the Biology Department at Xavier University of Louisiana in 2011, and has since received tenure and been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor.

Dr. Huckaba coordinates the first-year Biology course for STEM majors and teaches upper division courses including Anatomy and Physiology, Cell Biology, and the Ethics of Genetic Engineering. His laboratory uses a combination of biochemical and cell biological techniques to study neurodegenerative diseases including Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia and Alzheimer’s Disease. His work has been funded by multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Office of Naval Research (DoD). He has trained over 30 undergraduate research students in the laboratory that have gone on to PhD, MD, and DDS programs at some of the nation’s top universities, including the University of California, the University of Michigan, and Yale University, among many others.