Jessica Schlueter

Jessica Schlueter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte), within the College of Computing and Informatics. She holds an Honors Faculty appointment until June 2028. Her research focuses on plant genome sequencing, crop improvement, and pathogen surveillance. She co-leads UNC Charlotte’s SARS-CoV-2 Wastewater Surveillance program and is part of the Environmental Monitoring Lab (EML), working on protocols for detecting emerging pathogens through wastewater analysis.

Education: Dr. Schlueter earned a BS in Genetics from Texas A&M University (1999) and a PhD in Genetics from Iowa State University (2006). She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Purdue University before joining UNC Charlotte in 2009.

Research Interests: Her work combines bioinformatics with plant genomics, including studies on soybean and oat genomes. She pioneered genetic tools for Yaupon (native North American tea plant) and contributed to the PanOat Consortium. Current projects emphasize wastewater-based epidemiology for viral surveillance and genomic analysis of crop resilience.

Lab Affiliations: Environmental Monitoring Lab (EML), UNC Charlotte SARS-CoV-2 Surveillance Sequencing Program.