Leighanne Basta

Professor Basta earned her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences where she studied bacterial enzymes involved in isoprenoid biosynthesis. She did her postdoctoral work in the Center for Tuberculosis Research at Hopkins where she became interested in the enzymes that catalyze peptidoglycan formation in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. As a postdoctoral fellow, she was awarded a Teaching Fellowship through Loyola University at Maryland and worked as an Affiliate Professor in the Biology Department, teaching both introductory and upper level biology courses. She joined the Chemistry Department at USNA in 2015, and is one of the few members of the department that teaches both chemistry and biology introductory and upper level courses. Professor Basta has an active research program and has been successful in recruiting some of the department's top chemistry majors to study mycobacterial L,D-transpeptidase enzymes.