Heidi Elmendorf

Bio Information

Heidi Elmendorf joined UNT in August 2025 as Deputy to the President for University Initiatives after serving as Senior Advisor to President Keller since September 2024.

Dr. Elmendorf, who is on leave from her position as a tenured faculty member in the Department of Biology at Georgetown University, brings to UNT a wealth of university expertise to move university initiatives such as the UNT Learning Ecosystem forward. Dr. Elmendorf’s first passion is teaching, having taught a great breadth of courses for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students in a variety of settings from online courses to in-person labs and from large-lecture halls to small seminar rooms — and even a correctional facility in Washington, D.C.

A microbiologist who has researched both parasitic diseases and beneficial microbiomes, Dr. Elmendorf has provided research opportunities to undergraduate and graduate research students. She served for several years as an instructor and co-director of the Biology of Parasitism course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

In her 26 years at Georgetown, Dr. Elmendorf has served in a number of administrative roles that have  informed her understanding of the university’s creative potential to shape transformative educational experiences. She has been Senior Advisor to the President, Director of Science Planning, Co-chair of the Core Curriculum Committee, and is the founding director of two long-standing programs: the Regents STEM Scholars Program that supports first-generation science students and the RISE&Teach program that prepares science majors to serve as student teachers in public school classrooms.

Education:
• NIH Post-Doctoral Fellow, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease
• Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University
• A.B. in Biology, Princeton University