STAFF & FELLOWS

Jennie Hunter-Cevera

Dr. Jennie Hunter-Cevera has served as President of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute since October of 1999. Prior to this, she was the Director of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the E. O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which was a collaborative effort between the Lab and the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to this, she was cofounder of two small companies (The Biotic Network and Blue Sky Research) that did contract work for large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and also consulted for five years in a variety of biotechnology fields.

For 10 years Dr. Hunter-Cevera was employed at Cetus Corporation and served as the Director of Fermentation, Research and Development and before that at E. R. Squibb and Sons as a Research Scientist. Dr. Hunter-Cevera has served as President of the Society of Industrial Microbiology (SIM) and of the United States Federation of Culture Collections (USFCC). She served as Senior Editor for the Journal of Industrial Microbiology for ten years. Dr. Hunter-Cevera also served as a member on former USDA Secretary Glickman's Genetic Resources Advisory Board and President Clinton's State Department Council on Genetically Modified Foods. Dr. Hunter-Cevera also served as the United States representative to the OECD on Biological Resource Centers. She has given more than 50 invited lectures, seven keynote lectures, and is the author of several papers, chapters, and books, as well as the holder of two patents and one pending patent. Dr. Hunter-Cevera was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in 1995, received the 1996 SIM Charles Porter Award, was elected as a SIM Fellow in 1997, and the West Virginia University Nath Lecturer in 1999. She recently was honored by her alma mata, West Virginia University, as the 2003 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award. She has been honored as one of Maryland's Top 100 Women for 2003. Dr. Hunter-Cevera currently serves on Governor Ehrlich's Technology Commission for the State of Maryland and was one of six members of the Governor's Executive Council for Transition. In May of 2004, Dr. Hunter-Cevera was the recipient of the USFCC/J. Roger Porter Award. Supported by the United States Federation for Culture Collections (USFCC) and ASM, the award recognized Dr. Hunter-Cevera's expertise in collecting, maintaining, and preserving microbial cultures.