Mary Rodgers

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Mary Rodgers, Ph.D. is an Associate Research Fellow in Abbott’s diagnostics business.

In her role, Mary manages research from the Abbott Pandemic Defense Coalition, the first industry-led global scientific and public health partnership dedicated to the early detection of and rapid response to future pandemic threats. As part of the coalition, over 20 sites around the world monitor circulating and emerging pathogens to help quickly detect outbreaks, and then work together with health officials to minimize the spread.

Mary also tracks the diversity of infectious diseases including HIV, hepatitis and SARS-CoV-2 to track new variant’s impact on diagnostic testing. In 2019, Mary and a team of Abbott scientists announced the discovery of a new subtype of HIV and made the sequence available to the global research community. This research marked the first time in 19 years that a new subtype of HIV-1 Group M had been identified.

Mary joined Abbott in 2014 and has authored or coauthored more than 40 research papers and contributed thousands of viral genomes to public databases. Mary was named one of Business Insider’s 30 under 40 Young Leaders in Biotech in 2017 and is an inducted member of Abbott’s Volwiler Society, which recognizes its most distinguished scientists and engineers.

Mary received her Ph.D. in biological and biomedical sciences from Harvard University. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Southern California.