Cardiovascular Biology

Dr. Leslie Kennedy was born and raised in Charlotte, NC. In 2008, Dr. Kennedy earned her B.S. in Biology with honors from Elizabeth City State University, where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Distinguished Emblem Award and the Honors Program Merit Award. She then accepted a position as a laboratory manager in the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Kennedy then earned her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017 just prior to coming to the NHLBI in 2017 as a postdoctoral fellow working in the laboratory of Elizabeth Murphy, Ph.D. Within 3 years of beginning a fellowship at the NHLBI, Dr. Kennedy has won the NHLBI’s Lenfant Biomedical Fellowship Award and has been named an NIH Independent Research Scholar, which transitioned her from her postdoctoral fellowship to her current faculty position. Dr. Kennedy’s work focuses on investigating the molecular underpinnings of cardiovascular pathologies, such as heart failure and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.