Jesse began his independent research program at the University of Washington in 2014 with a focus on cell signaling networks and gene regulation. He uses approaches from mechanistic enzymology, biochemistry, and synthetic biology to study and engineer biological networks.

Jesse received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University, where he worked with Daniel Herschlag on mechanism and evolution in enzyme-catalyzed phosphoryl transfer reactions. He performed postdoctoral research with Wendell Lim at the University of California at San Francisco, where he studied mechanisms for controlling specificity in cell signaling networks and developed CRISPR-Cas tools for eukaryotic gene regulation.