His research focuses on extracellular vesicles, RNA-mediated regulation, biomarker discovery, and therapeutic modulation of innate and intrinsic defenses.He received his undergraduate degree from Penn State University, where he studied biochemistry and molecular biology, German, and international politics. He earned a doctorate from the Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology Program at Johns Hopkins and received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Dr. Witwer remained at Johns Hopkins to complete a postdoctoral fellowship in microRNA biomarker research, and he joined the faculty in 2011.