Jennifer Robbins came to Xavier in 2002 to teach biology, but she found herself increasingly interested in the service-oriented experiences the University offers all its students. That's why she joined the student group Alternative Breaks. You can read about one of her trips with them in the Xavier Viewbook. When she's not advising the group or traveling with them, she's busy teaching and doing research into her specialty - the relationship between pathogents and their hosts.
Current experiments concern how the food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes exploits mammalian cells to infect the gut and spread to parts of the body normally off-limits to bacteria, including the brain and placenta. In 2008, she is a Visiting Asst Professor at University of California, San Francisco's Pediatrics Department, studying feto-placental transmission of Listeria with Dr. Anna Bakardjiev. In the past, she has also studied how pathogens interact with white blood cells as a Visiting Scientist at University of California, Berkeley (School of Public Health), and University of Cincinnati's College of Medicine (Department of Internal Medicine).
Recent courses at Xavier include Virology, Microbiology, Introductory Life Sciences for Education Majors and General Biology lab. In the past, she's also taught Immunology, Human Physiology, Molecular Biology, 9th grade biology, Life labs and a service-learning course on AIDS set in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa.