Jennie Hunter-Cevera, President

Jennie C. Hunter-Cevera, Ph.D. 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.  Earlier, she was co-founder 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), of the United States Federation of Culture Collections (USFCC) and of the International Marine Biotechnology Association (IMBA).   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 70 invited lectures and keynote presentations and is the author of several papers, chapters, and books, as well as the holder of three patents and 15 pending patents. 

Dr. Hunter-Cevera was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in 1995, received the 1996 SIM Charles Porter Award, and was elected as a SIM Fellow in 1997.  She was the West Virginia University Nath Lecturer in 1999 and appointed by Governor Glendening as Maryland’s Science and Technology Representative for the Southern Governor’s Association in 2000.  Dr. Hunter-Cevera was honored by her alma mata, West Virginia University, as the 2003 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award.  In 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.  She was honored as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women for 2003 and 2007.  She was recognized in 2007 as one of the 50 Most Influential People in Maryland. Dr. Hunter-Cevera served 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.  She currently sits on the State of Maryland’s Task Force on Minority Participation in the Environmental Community and several sub-committees for the Maryland Life Science Authority Commission in addition to several other non-profit and for profit board of directors including BioIT.