Rebecca Fischer receives 2024 School of Public Health Dean’s Faculty Research Excellence Award

Rebecca Fischer, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, received the 2024 School of Public Health Dean’s Faculty Research Excellence Award. The honor is awarded annually, alternately recognizing early-career and senior faculty members who are doing outstanding research.

Fischer is an early-career researcher who focuses on developing evidence-based strategies to reduce and mitigate emerging infectious diseases and their impacts on health worldwide. Her research is multidisciplinary, linking the expertise of human and veterinary medicine, toxicology, geography, chemistry, virology, immunology, ecology and others with public health.

In 2023, Fischer formed the Laboratory for Emerging & Tropical Diseases Research (LEADR Lab). The LEADR team is housed within the School of Public Health’s “One Health Laboratories,” an interdisciplinary open labs concept that Fischer and faculty colleague Natalie Johnson, PhD, formed. LEADR lab has added two early-career faculty and supports several master and doctoral student researchers from public health, toxicology, veterinary integrative biosciences and microbiology.

Throughout her career, Fischer has served as a research mentor for 28 masters, 14 doctoral and five postdoctoral trainees. She has chaired nine DrPH committees, one PhD committee and served on seven external thesis committees. This year, she is hosting a Fulbright Visiting Student researcher from Colombia. Fischer was named one of “The Best Things in Texas, 2021” by Texas Monthly for her efforts to provide Texans, and the rest of the world, with accurate guidance on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fischer regularly publishes in top-tier journals, generally using a multidisciplinary framework, often involving international collaborations and including her mentored students. In the past three years, she has received a $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), worked on four active grants, and has been involved in the submission of almost 20 new grant proposals.