Sullivan provides strategic leadership for the School of Medicine’s basic and preclinical science enterprise. She oversees planning and alignment across basic science departments, research centers, and institutes and work with clinical and administrative leaders to strengthen the school’s research portfolio, support faculty recruitment and development, and ensure that the school’s infrastructure, training programs, and resources position Duke at the forefront of discovery. Additional duties included oversight of the postdoctoral office, animal care program, core facilities, and research lab space utilization in the School of Medicine.  

As associate dean, Sullivan directed the Office of Biomedical Graduate Education which supports approximately 600 trainees across 15 PhD programs. In this role, she strengthened graduate education infrastructure, advanced sustainable funding models, and led the development of innovative tools such as the Duke Trainee Tracking Tool (T3), now integrated across Duke School of Medicine PhD programs.

Dr. Sullivan obtained her undergraduate degree in Biology, Chemistry, and Classics from Western Maryland College and earned her Ph.D. in Human Genetics from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. She completed postdoctoral training at the MRC Human Genetics Unit (Edinburgh, UK) and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, CA). She was recruited to Duke in 2005 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology. In 2023, she was named a James B. Duke Distinguished Professor. Her lab studies mechanisms of human genome stability in normal and disease states, with a focus on the genomics and epigenetics of the centromere, functional characterization of alpha satellite variation, and genome engineering of human artificial chromosomes and chromosome rearrangements.

Contact: Keely Kelly, Executive Assistant