Augusta University is Georgia's health sciences university and a national center for cyber security education. Home to the state’s only public academic medical center, Augusta’s world-class clinicians are bringing the medicine of tomorrow to patient care today. The university is comprised of nine colleges, including one of the nation's oldest medical schools, the Medical College of Georgia; the Hull College of Business; and the state's only dental school, the Dental College of Georgia.

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Harriet Dustan Award, American Heart Association Council on Hypertension

Medical College of Georgia Outstanding Faculty Award

Medical College of Georgia Group on Women in Medicine and Science (GWIMS) Leadership Award

Outstanding Faculty Award in Support of First-Year PhD Students, The Graduate School, AU

Ernest Starling Lectureship Award, APS WEH Section

American Heart Association

American Physiological Society

Adverse Maternal and Fetal Outcomes in a Novel Experimental Model of Pregnancy after Recovery from Renal Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury

Greater T Regulatory Cells in Females Attenuate DOCA-Salt-Induced Increases in Blood Pressure Versus Males

Necrosis Contributes to the Development of Hypertension in Male, but Not Female, Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

Jennifer Sullivan, PhD, has been a part of the AU community since 2000 when she joined the Vascular Biology Center in the Medical College of Georgia as a postdoctoral fellow.

She joined the faculty in 2008 and is currently a Regents Professor in the Department of Physiology, the Dean of the Graduate School, and the Interim EVP of Academic Affairs and Provost. Dr. Sullivan is an internationally recognized expert and leader in the field of sex differences in cardiovascular physiology and pathophysiology.

Dr. Sullivan's work has been continuously funded by the NIH and the American Heart Association since becoming a tenure track faculty member in 2008. She consistently publishes her work in the top journals in the field of hypertension, with over 120 peer reviewed articles and has received numerous prestigious awards for her outstanding work.

Dr. Sullivan has active leadership roles in national scientific societies, serves on the editorial board as associate editor for leading peer reviewed journals, and currently is chair of an NIH grant study section. She is also an exceptional educator and mentor, with a demonstrated commitment to the training of undergraduate, graduate, and medical students, as well as postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty members. She creates a challenging and collaborative training environment for all of her trainees while focusing on the needs of each individual.

Hypertension

Cardiovascular Physiology

Pathophysiology                                                                       

Higher Education Administration

Research Profile

ResearchGate Citations

Personal Website

Faculty Directory Profile 

NIH training grant enhances opportunities for biomedical graduate students at AU

New rodent model helps identify pregnant women whose prior kidney injury also affects babies

Females use anti-inflammatory T cells to keep their blood pressure down

High-fat diets appear bad for blood pressure in younger males and females

augusta-university-named-nih-specialized-center-of-research-excellence-on-sex-differences

Interim Provost and Dean of The Graduate School

Jennifer C. Sullivan, PhD, dean of The Graduate School at Augusta University, has dedicated her research to better understand why blood pressure increases in hypertension and raising awareness to the dangers of not paying attention to heart health, particularly among women.

Throughout her career, Sullivan has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Heart Association since becoming a tenure-track faculty member in 2008, and now she has a chance to take her research further after securing a five-year, $7.5 million grant to have Augusta University designated as a Specialized Center of Research Excellence on Sex Differences (SCORE) by the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health. It’s a distinction that places AU among 10 other leaders in research for the field, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, the Medical University of South Carolina, the University of Colorado and Yale University. The University of California, Los Angeles has two SCORE programs.

 “I’m so proud and excited for this opportunity because this has been what I have focused my research program on for my entire career, and to be able to advance it with a program like this, where we can actually build a unique program focused on an area that can make a difference, is just so much fun,” Sullivan said. “Just the fact that Augusta will be included on this list, attached to an organization of the caliber of NIH, will provide opportunities that we’ve never had before, especially for our students and younger researchers.”  Sullivan’s SCORE project, “Improving awareness of women with hypertension: ROAR (Rural, Obese, At Risk),” focuses primarily on the fact that, while young women are considered “protected” from hypertension and the associated cardiovascular risk relative to age-matched men, the elimination of hypertension is projected to have a larger impact on cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality in women.

“The group of people with the highest risk of death from hypertension is in the rural South of the U.S., specifically Black women are particularly vulnerable to developing hypertension and CVD,” Sullivan said.  According to Sullivan’s research and information available from the American Heart Association (AHA), approximately 19 million deaths were attributed to CVD globally in 2020, an increase of about 20% from 2010. Both Sullivan and the AHA state that cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States, and that hypertension is a major modifiable risk factor for CVD.

Sullivan said, “It has been suggested that eliminating hypertension would reduce CVD mortality by over 30% in men and 38% in women, but a critical barrier to limiting premature death from CVD is lack of awareness surrounding the risks of CVD. Our overall goal in this new funded project is to transform academic and community understanding of sex as a biological variable in the consideration of hypertension.”

The three research projects include Sullivan’s lead project on high fat diets, a project on systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) disproportionately affects young women led by Erin Taylor, PhD, at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and another project looking at the role of inflammation and how immune cells are activated in SLE led by Michael Ryan, PhD, at the University of South Carlina’s School of Medicine.

 But there is more to SCORE than just conducting research. Each SCORE team is also responsible for a career enhancement core and a leadership administrative core.

“What really sets these grants apart are the emphasis on the career enhancement and leadership administrative cores. The Career Enhancement Core is designed to be a bit open ended for each SCORE, but in talking to the NIH, what they were most excited about in our project is the community outreach piece we designed. “Our grant includes people across the entire campus, including Augusta University’s Medical College of Georgia, the College of Allied Health Sciences, the College of Education and Human Development and multiple campus partners including some of our sororities on campus and the Center for Writing Excellence,” Sullivan said. “More specifically, the COEHD is able to extend our outreach efforts to our local schools to begin educating children on the importance of screening, and our sororities are obviously connected with other chapters across the southeast which helps us spread our message, as well.”  Sullivan notes that, through this portion of the project alone, there will be numerous opportunities to include students from Augusta University’s CAHS, College of Nursing, Department of Kinesiology, the Biomedical Sciences PhD program and the proposed School of Public Health.  Marlo Vernon, PhD, associate professor at MCG and researcher for the Georgia Cancer Center, and Amanda Behr, chair of the Medical Illustration Program in CAHS, are also involved in various stages of the project.

“The other thing the Career Enhancement Core will do is provide pilot grants to three research projects each year for early-stage investigators. We’ll also be able to fund sabbaticals for graduate students or postdocs to go someplace else and learn cutting edge techniques from other experts, so there is a lot built in that will help us support up-and-coming researchers,” Sullivan said. “We’re now part of this consortium, and they have a once-a-year, in-person meeting at the NIH offices, so we’ll go to that for the first time this year, and what’s neat about it is they’re really promoting young investigators. Each grant can bring up to eight people, the our hope is that we will have the investigators funded by the pilot projects attend next year, giving those folks the opportunity to present and talk to program officers with the NIH and develop a pipeline of investigators committed to studying women’s health and sex as a biological variable.”  Sullivan is also looking to designate some of her summer graduate and undergraduate research positions to the project beginning next summer.

“The Graduate School already has a summer program to support undergraduates that we will be able to piggyback off of. We have set aside five slots in that program for this that will go to students studying the sex as a biological variable, and the applications for that program, STAR, is already open,” Sullivan said. “We’re also planning a symposium in collaboration with the Physiology Department in April 2024. This is an annual event sponsored by the department, and this year they selected sex differences as the topic, so we are hoping to help increase exposure and attendance.”   Looking to know more about the amazing research happening at  Augusta?

To connect with Jennifer Sullivan, simply click on her icon ow to arrange an interview today.




Augusta University named NIH Specialized Center of Research Excellence on Sex Differences

au-research-team-awarded-44-million-american-heart-association-grant

Associate Professor, Department of Community and Behavioral Health Sciences, School of Public Health

A research team at Augusta University, led by Jennifer C. Sullivan, PhD, has secured a $4.4 million grant from the American Heart Association to study the risk factors for cardiovascular and kidney diseases and how they impact women.

Sullivan’s research center, “Disruptions in cardiorenal free fatty acid metabolism in Cardiovascular Kidney Metabolic Syndrome,” is part of a larger $15 million project titled “Strategically Focused Research Network on Cardiovascular Kidney Metabolic Syndrome: Heterogeneity in Women.” The overarching AHA project is aimed at learning why women may be more likely to develop cardiovascular and kidney diseases due to certain unique risk factors and life stages. Research teams from Massachusetts General Hospital and The Ohio State University were also chosen.

 “I think this is a huge step for Augusta University as we continue to distinguish ourselves and the research that we have here focused on the health of women,” said Sullivan, dean of The Graduate School. “This grant is particularly impactful as we look to advance and improve the health of women, not just in Georgia, but for the entire country.” According to the Healthy Georgia Report, produced by AU’s School of Public Health, Georgia has the 23rd highest rate of obesity in the United States. Among the women living in the state, 38.3% of them, as well as 37.5% of people living in rural areas, suffer from obesity.






“It’s great that we are able to represent the state of Georgia because our state has such a high prevalence for obesity rates,” said Sullivan, who is the director of AU’s SCORE project “Improving awareness of women with hypertension: ROAR (Rural, Obese, At Risk).” “It’s important for us to understand that different populations have distinct needs. You can’t talk about a one-size-fits-all approach to health. This is really about trying to understand how different groups are impacted.”   Each center is comprised of three teams, as well as a training component and an area partner. Together, they will explore obesity’s lifetime impact on CKM syndrome through three projects.

CKM syndrome is a clinical term that describes the combined health effects of heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes and obesity, which puts people at high risk for heart attack, stroke and heart failure. According to the American Heart Association’s 2025 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, about 1 in 3 U.S. adults has at least three components of CKM syndrome, which include high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, high blood glucose (sugar), impaired kidney function and excess body weight.

The first project is led by Daria Ilatovskaya, PhD, and Justine Abais-Battad, PhD, and will look at aging and Western diet-induced CKMS mechanisms in obesity. Ilatovskaya is an associate professor and the graduate program director for the Doctor of Philosophy in Physiology program, and Abais-Battad is an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology with the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

The second component, led by Jessica Faulkner, PhD, an assistant professor in MCG’s Physiology department, will study obesity-associated mechanisms of CKMS in pregnancy.

The third project, led by Stephen Coughlin, PhD, with Marlo Vernon, PhD, is looking at CKMS epidemiology, associations with obesity, CVD/CKD. Coughlin is the program director for the Master of Science in Epidemiology and professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics, Data Science, and Epidemiology, while Vernon is an associate professor with MCG’s Georgia Prevention Institute and SPH’s Department of Community and Behavioral Health Sciences.

Additionally, the team will talk to women and health care providers from a variety of backgrounds and experiences to assess current knowledge and interest levels in heart health and use that information to develop programs that may help treat and prevent disease.

There is also a training director, Alison Kriegel, PhD, a professor in the Department of Physiology, and a core director, Guido Verbeck, PhD, chair and professor of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Science and Mathematics. “We have a strong blend of clinical epidemiology and basic science, as well as a training component, which we will fill with post-doctoral fellows,” Sullivan said. “Dr. Ilatovskaya, Dr. Faulkner, Dr. Abais-Battad and Dr. Vernon are all a part of our ROAR grant, and, while this isn’t directly related to that program, it allowed us to demonstrate how we are already well positioned to work together to amplify our ability and increase awareness about the importance of the health of women.”  The team has over 50 collaborative papers and has secured more than $13 million in collaborative funding to advance the health of women. They also all have experience training fellows and students to continue to expand their reach.

 “We already have a lot of the infrastructure in place for this kind of cross-disciplinary project, so we leaned very heavily into our connections and the expertise we have here at Augusta University. It’s set up very similar to our ROAR program, so this is something that was really organic in nature,” Sullivan said.  The American Heart Association has invested almost $300 million to establish 18 Strategically Focused Research Networks, each aimed at addressing a key strategic issue identified by the association’s volunteer Board of Directors. Prior networks have been studying a wide variety of important topics including, but not limited to, prevention, hypertension, the health of women, heart failure, obesity, vascular disease, atrial fibrillation, arrhythmias/sudden cardiac death, cardiometabolic health/type 2 diabetes, health technology, cardio-oncology, the biological impact of chronic psychosocial stress and the role of inflammation in cardiovascular health.

Each network centers around scientific knowledge and knowledge gaps, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the key research topic. Three to six research centers make up each network, bringing together investigators with expertise in basic, clinical and population/behavioral health science to find new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent heart disease and stroke.

Funding scientific research and discovery through initiatives like these awards is a cornerstone of the century-old American Heart Association’s lifesaving mission. The association has now funded more than $5.9 billion in cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and brain health research since 1949, making it the single largest non-government supporter of heart and brain health research in the United States. New knowledge resulting from this funding continues to save lives and directly impact millions of people in every corner of the U.S. and around the world.

 Looking to know more about the amazing research happening at  Augusta?

To connect with Dr. Sullivan, simply click on her icon to arrange an interview today.



AU research team awarded $4.4 million American Heart Association grant

Join us for an inspiring episode as we sit down with two remarkable women leaders, Jennifer Sullivan, PhD, dean for The Graduate School, and Nancy Young, DMD, dean of The Dental College of Georgia. In this thought-provoking conversation, we delve into the experiences and triumphs of being women in STEM and in higher education.

Learn more about The Graduate School: https://www.augusta.edu/gradschool/ 

This video was produced and created by the corporate video team in Communications & Marketing at Augusta University.



The deans at Augusta University are breaking the mold | In the Wild

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