Penelope J. Padgett
Research and Doctoral Universities Constituency Director
Public Health Epidemiologist
N.C. Division of Public Health

Penelope Padgett earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a degree in medical technology from the Watts Hospital School of Medical Technology in Durham, N.C. She worked as a clinical microbiologist for four years before entering graduate school at Virginia Tech, where she earned a Ph.D. in microbiology. She went on to an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Medical College of Virginia. She joined the faculty at Wilkes College as an assistant professor after her postdoctoral fellowship ended. She left Wilkes College to accept a position at Shippensburg University, where she earned the rank of professor. Over her 17-year career at Wilkes and Shippensburg, she taught microbiology, pathogenic microbiology, immunology, microbial physiology, microbial ecology, virology and human biology. Additionally, she taught Biology 11, Principles of Biology, at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2001-2003. In 1997, she entered the Department of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, UNC-Chapel Hill to earn an M.P.H. in infectious disease epidemiology. She left Shippensburg University in 1999 to pursue her career in public health and has served as a marketplace analyst for the N.C. Primary Health Care Association, a project coordinator for the Diabetes Management Project in the Department of Medicine at UNC Hospitals and a research associate at the N.C. Center for Public Health Preparedness. She joined the HIV/STD Prevention and Care Branch as a Public Health Epidemiologist in August 2004.