Cheerleader and Molecular Neuroscience Researcher

Titans cheerleader Melissa Hodges has more going on in her life and her mind than almost any of the fans she cheers in front of on Sundays. The 23-year-old New Orleans native recently graduated with a Bachelors in Neuroscience from Vanderbilt, and is working toward a career in medicine. She's been a cheerleader for the Titans for three years. She is presently a graduate student doing things like messing around with RNA and then doing something else with it. This is how the expert described what she does.

"Eventually we'll take the cells and we will extract RNA from them and then form cDNA, and with that we'll use a method called quantitative real time PCR, and study the gene expressions."

Exactly how I would do it, I'm glad we're on the same page with that.

But what about the perks of her job, you know the drunken idiots, yes I have been one of them, who who are less than gentlemenly when talking about cheerleaders.

Says Hodges; "We've seen it all," she says with a forgiving smile. "We always try to tell ourselves that there will come a day sooner probably than later that no one will want to take our picture."

I would say she'll probably do alright in her life, she obviously works her a$$ off in whatever she does and it's clear she doesn't rely on her looks. She'll be on E!'s Girls Next Door but that's fine, there are enough dumb blondes in the world.