Jessica Dunleavey, PhD

Jessica Dunleavey is a senior lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the associate director of the BME undergraduate program. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in the lab of Dr. Victoria Bautch where she studied blood vessels to understand the signaling that directs tissue formation. Dr. Dunleavey completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Maryland School of Medicine under Dr. Norann Zaghloul where she focused on the physiology and pathology of pancreatic function in diabetes. She has been focused on undergraduate learning and success throughout her studies and training, receiving multiple fellowships from the Collaborative Teaching Fellowship Program jointly run by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She plans to continue her efforts to improve educational accessibility and is an active proponent of under-represented groups in science, continuing to advocate for scientific training in primary education as she did throughout her graduate and postdoctoral years.

Dr. Dunleavey began teaching at Johns Hopkins in the Cell & Tissue Engineering Lab course in 2020. This hands-on learning experience provides undergraduate students the opportunity to work with living material and apply the scientific method to research early in their science careers. Her background as a classically trained biologist using animal and cell-based modeling will be applied to course design in the Translational Cell & Tissue and Immunoengineering focus areas, integrating student-directed learning goals and fostering independent thinking through active learning methodologies. Dr. Dunleavey also contributes to the department as an active member of the undergraduate curriculum committee.