Jenna Zuromski is a global public health scientist and scientific project manager dedicated to strengthening laboratory systems and advancing public health in low- and middle-income countries. She earned her PhD from Brown University in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Kurtis, where she focused on vaccine and therapeutic development for Plasmodium falciparum malaria, and completed her postdoctoral training at Brown with Dr. Jeffrey Bailey, contributing to large-scale genomic epidemiology study across the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania. At UNC, Dr. Zuromski is the scientific project manager of a U.S. defense–funded initiative focused on mosquito xenosurveillance for early detection of human pathogens, leading the design and implementation of field-deployable laboratory and data analysis workflows across domestic and global sites. Her work bridges technical innovation and real-world application, ensuring approaches are practical, scalable, and responsive to public health needs.
Dr. Zuromski is especially passionate about capacity building and collaborative science. She has developed and led hands-on training programs that empower scientists in LMICs to run complex laboratory assays and analyze data independently. She helped establish Ethiopia’s first successful in vitro malaria culture laboratory at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, a program that continues to support studies on local antimalarial drug resistance. She has also led and coordinated multiple large-scale projects repurposing samples from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo national Demographic and Health Surveys, building local expertise in qPCR, use of robotic liquid handlers to improve throughput, and data analysis pipelines for malaria, HBV, and HDV epidemiology studies. Across her work, Dr. Zuromski is driven by a commitment to sustainable partnerships, technical excellence, and translation of data into meaningful public health action.
When not working or traveling globally, she can usually be found watering her large plant collection, perusing local farmers markets, or exploring NC with her partner and dog.
