Lea Lab Team

Susan Lea earned her DPhil degree at the University of Oxford, where she focused on structural virology. Dr. Lea is an experienced educator having served as a lecturer at the University of Oxford for over 10 years before taking a position as co-director of the James Martin Vaccine Design Institute in Oxford and, subsequently, serving as the chair of Microbiology at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. Notably, Dr. Lea served as chief and senior investigator of the Center for Structural Biology at the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute. Her contributions to science have led to her being elected a Member of EMBO and named a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (London), the Royal Society of London, and the American Academy of Microbiology. 

In 2025, Dr. Lea joined the faculty at St. Jude as member and endowed chair in the Department of Structural Biology. Her research program is focused on defining the structure and function of proteins involved in bacterial pathogenesis, immune evasion, and host interactions.