Valeria C Culotta

Valeria Cizewski Culotta is an American molecular biologist.

Early life and education Culotta was born and raised in Maryland, where she graduated from Havre De Grace High School in 1975. She then completed her PhD in 1987 at Johns Hopkins University and her postdoctoral training in molecular biology at the National Cancer Institute.

Career Following her postdoctoral training, Culotta joined the faculty of Environmental Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1990. Culotta eventually joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Beyond studying copper chaperones, Culotta began to study the role of manganese and iron in the cellular workings of the Lyme bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi. In 2015, Culotta and her research team discovered that levels of copper in the bloodstream increase during infection in an attempt to kill the pathogen with copper poisoning. As such, organs such as the kidneys send their copper into the bloodstream, causing their levels to drop. The following year, she became the Bloomberg School's first Director of Postdoctoral Training and earned the 2018 inaugural Dean's Award for Distinction in Faculty Mentoring.

In 2020, Culotta was appointed the inaugural Associate Vice Provost for Postdoctoral Affairs to "advance policies and priorities for postdocs across all of the Johns Hopkins divisions and labs."