Jenna Rickus

Dr. Jenna Rickus is the Senior Vice Provost at the University of Arizona. Prior to this appointment, she served as the senior vice provost  for teaching and learning at Purdue University. In this role, Dr. Rickus provided leadership to the Purdue campus in undergraduate education, academic affairs and student success. 

Jenna is a bioengineer and interdisciplinary scholar with expertise in biofunctional materials and biosensors. She is an alumna of Purdue (BS ABE ’95, BS BCHM ’95) and spent time in industry as an engineer at Kraft Foods before receiving her Ph.D. in Neuroscience and NeuroEngineering from UCLA. Her research focuses on engineered biomaterials for the sensing and actuation of living cells and tissues with a particular emphasis on the brain and pancreas. She co-founded and co-directed the Physiological Sensing Facility in the Bindley Bioscience Center and the Birck Nanotechnology Center as a hub for interdisciplinary teams to build new sensing technologies to answer previously unanswerable questions in physiology. Materials from her lab have wide reaching applications for in vitro cell physiology, in vivo implantable cell and device-based therapeutics. Her lab had collaborated heavily with other researchers to integrate novel materials into devices, implants, and 3D culture systems to create integrated platforms for sensing and actuating. With funding from NIH, NSF, USDA, NASA, the Army Research Office and DARPA, her research lab has developed new technologies with an impact on important problems in brain cancer, type 1 diabetes, foodborne illness and space biology. She is a member of the Purdue Innovator Hall of Fame and an ELATES Fellow alumna. 

As a faculty member, Dr. Rickus had also invested significantly in building, growing and strengthening academic programs, classroom teaching and transformational experiences for students. She founded the Purdue international genetically engineered machine (iGEM) undergraduate research team and was a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Education Alliance bringing authentic research into the classroom. 

Dr. Rickus has been PI or co-PI on over $112M in externally funded grants supporting work across all mission areas of research, teaching, and engagement. She has won numerous awards for this work including the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Outstanding Teacher in Biomedical Engineering, the Purdue Student Favorite Faculty - Most Distinguished Faculty for Research Award, the College Mentors for Kids Erin Slater Mentoring Achievement Award, the Mortar Board National College Honor Society Alumni Achievement Award, and the National Academic Advising Association Michael C. Holen Pacesetter Award.