Rachel D Burnside, PhD, MBA, FACMG

Dr. Burnside joined the UF Health Cytogenetics lab as Section Director in 2023. She is ABMGG Board Certified in both Clinical Cytogenetics and Laboratory Genetics and Genomics and brings a wide breadth of professional experience to the lab.

Starting as a cytogenetics technologist in Houston, TX in a private lab that was owned by the late genetics pioneer, Dr. Tom Caskey, Dr. Burnside was influenced to pursue further genetics education. She earned her doctorate degree from the University of Kentucky in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics and completed an ABMGG fellowship in Clinical Cytogenetics as the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Subsequently, she worked at LabCorp in Research Triangle Park, NC for 10 years as a Cytogenetics lab director.

In 2018, after earning an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business with a certification in Health Sector Management, Dr. Burnside took her experience to industry, managing the global marketing and product management teams for Beckman Coulter Diagnostics hematology business unit for four years before returning to the lab as the Section Director.

Our lab specializes in the diagnosis of neoplastic and congenital genetic conditions using chromosome analysis and FISH testing.