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 B.S. from Muhlenberg College, and 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. Dr. Dunleavey focused on undergraduate learning and success throughout her studies and training and joined the teaching faculty in 2020.

She oversees educational efforts in the biological teaching lab, a key learning environment in the masters and undergraduate curriculum. Her courses focus on active learning and hands-on experiences with living material through cutting edge procedures in cell-, tissue-, and immuno-engineering. Her background as a classically trained biologist using animal and cell-based modeling is applied to course design where she integrates student-directed learning goals and fostering independent thinking through active learning methodologies. Dr. Dunleavey brings her focus on improved educational accessibility and passion to engage under-represented science groups to her role as Director for ISPEED in BME, a pre-college educational course that offers early engineering training for all.

Dr. Dunleavey now publishes in the educational field with past educational grants for her courses and won the 2024 Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching award for her work in education. She previously was awarded post-doctoral Collaborative Teaching Fellowships through the University of Maryland School of Medicine in both 2018 and 2019 and in 2023 received a Faculty Forward Fellowship through Johns Hopkins University.