Dr. Jill A. Jenkins was born on August 4, 1959 to John and Joyce (Flanigan) Jenkins in New York City. Jill attended Margaret M. Murphy Elementary School, Hudson Falls Junior High School, and Hudson Falls Senior High School before graduating in 1977. Especially influential teachers included Mr. Gary Conrick (Biology), Miss Joyce Irwin (Choir), and Mr. Alan Chien (Art). After attending a liberal arts curriculum at Eisenhower College in Seneca Falls, New York, she transferred to Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, graduating in 1981 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology. After serving as a microbiological technician at Eastman Dental Center in Rochester, she headed “out west” to earn a Master’s Degree in Microbiology and Biochemistry, with a thesis project on steelhead trout immunology, from the Department of Biology, Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho. She was recruited “back east” to Memphis State University earning a Ph.D. in Biology with a focus on immunopathology. While serving as a post-doctoral research associate with Dr. S. Wachtel in human female reproductive genetics at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Tennessee, Memphis, she learned important biotechnologies in molecular research, as well as approaches for publishing, upon which she continues to rely during her career.
Dr. Jenkins has served as a research microbiologist with the United States Department of the Interior since 1992, currently stationed at the United States Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center, Lafayette, Louisiana, after working with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Marion, Alabama. She enjoys working with a network of esteemed colleagues across the country in assessing changes in watersheds, which is central to the understanding of ecosystems and germane to the management of their associated resources. Her research focuses on biomarker development in aquatic animals (fish and frogs, especially); biomarkers are quantifiable, and so are diagnostic and predictive of ecosystem health, with typical stressors being poor water quality and contaminating chemicals. Dr. Jenkins works with federally endangered animals, as well as invasive fish species. Biomarker research results generated are informing environmental managers in such locations as the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada, the Columbia River Basin in the northwest, the Imperial Valley of southern California, the island of Oahu in Hawaii, Kenai Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and the Chesapeake Bay estuarine system on the east coast.
Activities include long-distance running, dogs, and involvement in scientific professional organizations such as the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and the American Fisheries Society. Dr. Jenkins is married to a professor of genetics at Louisiana State University, Dr. Terrence Tiersch. They have two sons, Connor age 13 and Nolan age 10. They attend a Catholic Elementary School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.