Dr. Susan Fisher-Hoch
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
School of Public Health
Brownsville Regional Campus, Professor

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Early in 1997 she and her husband moved to Lyon, France, where she took charge of the design, building and scientific program of a new BSL4 suit laboratory, financed by Charles Mérieux. This is now the most technologically advanced laboratory for handling dangerous viruses in the world. She launched a comprehensive scientific program with collaborators in Europe, the United States and Africa. The President of France, M. J. Chirac, officially inaugurated the laboratory in March 1999. Dr Fisher-Hoch has been awarded the Chevalier de Legion d’Honneur, Le Medaille de Lyon by the mayor and former Prime Minister of France, Raymond Barre, and Le Prix Scientifique du Group Paris-Lyon, for her work in designing, constructing, and rendering operational the BSL4 laboratory of Lyon. The laboratory was given official permission to operate at BSL4 on June 16th, 2000. During this period Dr. Fisher-Hoch participated in a meeting in Novosibirsk, Siberia, to try to develop scientific programs with the BSL4 laboratory there, and also was involved in reviews of the Nipah outbreak in Malasia, and worked with a team in Gabon performing immunological studies on patient samples from a recent Ebola outbreak in that country.
In January 2001, she moved to Brownsville, Texas, to join her husband who was appointed Assistant Dean for the new Brownsville campus of the UT School of Public Health. She is a full professor in the new school, taking particular responsibility for setting up the new laboratory, teaching and setting up studies of diseases important in the border communities. Since her arrival she has participated in an NIH grant with collaborators at the Scripps Research Institute and USAMRIID to develop a DNA vaccine for Lassa fever.
Dr. Fisher-Hoch speaks fluent French, and Italian, and is currently learning Spanish. She carries both American and Britishpassports. She has over the years contributed many chapters to major textbooks, written review articles, reviewed for several journals, and has more than 100 major publications. She has written invited editorials for the Lancet, and provided expert advice to the lay press and television, being featured personally in both media, and in books dealing with hemorrhagic fevers. With her husband, Joe McCormick she has published a popular account of their adventures which has sold more than 70,000 copies, was translated into seven languages, and has been reissued in hard cover and paperback by Barnes and Noble.