Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has selected Lainie Rutkow to serve as interim provost, following the departure of current provost Ray Jayawardhana, recently appointed president of the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Rutkow will assume her new responsibilities in mid-February.
A professor of health policy and management in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Advanced International Studies, Dr. Rutkow has served as executive vice provost at Johns Hopkins for the past two years. She has held several key leadership roles at the university, including vice provost for interdisciplinary initiatives, senior advisor to the president, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Law and the Public’s Health, and co-director of the joint MPH/JD program.
Originally trained as a public health lawyer and researcher, Dr. Rutkow focuses on use of the law to protect and promote public health, with a particular emphasis on emergency preparedness and chronic disease prevention. From 2016 to 2019, she was the inaugural visiting scholar with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Law Program. Dr. Rutkow also developed and led the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, considered one of the leading data-sources on COVID-19.
Dr. Rutkow is a graduate of Yale University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and history of science and medicine. She earned her law degree from New York University and holds a master of public health degree and a Ph.D. in health policy from Johns Hopkins University.