Amani Nuru-Jeter

2026-27 Academic Senate Vice Chair

Amani Nuru-Jeter, Professor of Community Health Sciences and Epidemiology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health has been a member of the UC Berkeley faculty since 2005. She brings deep institutional knowledge, a record of sustained Senate leadership, and a longstanding commitment to advancing equity and excellence in higher education. She emphasizes the importance of collaborative leadership, particularly in addressing pressing challenges related to fiscal health, the future of graduate education, research resilience, and trust in higher education.

A leading scholar in health equity and social epidemiology, Professor Nuru-Jeter’s research integrates concepts, theories and methods from epidemiology and the social and biomedical sciences to examine the mechanisms driving racial health inequities across populations, across place, and over the lifecourse. Specific areas of research include racial discrimination and the psychobiology of stress; the social production of health inequities through intersections of race, gender, and social class; the measurement and study of racism as a social and structural determinant of health; and the role of place (e.g., racial residential segregation) as a social determinant of health inequities. She has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and secured over $26M in research funding. She currently serves as Director of Evidence for Action, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation dedicated to advancing action-oriented racial and Indigenous health equity research.

Professor Nuru-Jeter brings extensive experience in shared governance at the departmental, campus, and systemwide levels. At Berkeley, she has held numerous leadership roles, including Faculty Chair, Executive Associate Dean, and Head Graduate Adviser in the School of Public Health, as well as chair of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate in 2024–25, following a term as vice chair in 2023–24. At Berkeley, she has led strategic planning and faculty and curriculum development efforts, restructured shared governance processes, advocated for increased funding for research infrastructure improvements, led initiatives to support faculty adjustment to the new AI landscape, and led efforts to ensure faculty voice in the wake of disruptive federal actions. Her systemwide Senate service includes the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS), the University Committee on Planning and Budget (UCPB), and service as vice chair and chair of the University Committee on Diversity and Equity (UCODE). In these roles, she has worked across Senate and administrative leadership to address complex institutional challenges affecting the University of California, including admissions, budget, and faculty equity.

Her contributions at Berkeley were recognized with the Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence and Equity in 2022.

Professor Nuru-Jeter earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Maryland, an M.P.H. in Maternal and Child Health from The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, and a Ph.D. in Health and Social Policy from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship through the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley.