Jim Coker
Center Director, Sr. Lecturer
3400 North Charles Street
36 Levi Hall
Baltimore, MD 21218
At Johns Hopkins, Jim Coker is the Director of the Center for Biotechnology Education.
In addition to research, he has taught for eight institutions over the past 25 years. During that time, he worked to improve STEM education and advocated for increasing access to education for adult and military students as well as career changers and underserved populations.
Coker earned Bachelor of Science degrees in zoology and in microbiology and molecular genetics, with a minor in philosophy, from Oklahoma State University. He earned a PhD in the Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology Department at The Pennsylvania State University, focusing on the relationship between activity and stability in proteins, and completed a postdoc at The Center for Marine Biotechnology. Coker started a lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham that focused on unlocking the mechanisms of how microorganisms adapt and respond to their environment.