Jane Carlton is the director of the Malaria Research Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. Professor Carlton is passionate about genomics and its power to transform the study of important global health diseases such as malaria which cause illness and death among disadvantaged people in low-income countries. Her research involves using comparative genomics—literally comparing genomes—to probe the biology and evolution of the malaria parasite and its mosquito vector, and to find better ways for malaria surveillance, treatment, and control.
For the past 18 years, she has worked in India most recently as director of an NIH International Center of Excellence for Malaria Research based at six Indian institutions and with field sites in four different states. She is a technical advisor to the World Health Organization, has published more than 160 research articles and chapters, and been profiled by CNN, BBC, and The Economist. She received the Stoll-Stunkard Memorial Award from the American Society for Parasitologists in 2010, was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2024, the highest award conferred by the institute in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of malaria research. In 2025, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.