Samuel Named College of Medicine Wofford Cain Chair in Infectious Disease

James Samuel, Ph.D., professor at the Texas A&M College of Medicine and chair of the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology, was recently named the Wofford Cain Chair in Infectious Disease.

Samuel has been an integral part of the College of Medicine faculty since 1994 and has led the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology as Department Chair since 2010 down a productive and innovative path. With the addition of this Chair, all basic science departments in the College of Medicine now have endowed chair positions aimed at significantly enhancing the mission of the College of Medicine.

Samuel received his undergraduate degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Washington State University in Pullman, Wash.  He received post-doctoral training at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., and worked in the Biotechnology arena for Battelle Memorial Institute and MicroCarb, Inc., prior to joining the College of Medicine.  He has authored more than 92 peer reviewed manuscripts and is a national and international expert on Q fever. He has had the honor to serve as primary mentor/graduate chair for 15 graduate students, 16 post-doctoral fellows and membership on more than 50 graduate committees while in the College of Medicine.  He has maintained a consistently funded research program on Q fever from the National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense while providing significant service to grant and manuscript review. Previous honors include College of Medicine Senior Research Award (2010) and President of the American Society of Rickettsiology (2007-2009).