With Researcher Spotlights, the Microbial Systems Initiative aims to introduce you to the breadth and diversity of research interests and potential growth opportunities at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. We hope that by highlighting both the researchers and their research, we can help you to learn more about and connect with your colleagues to enhance multidisciplinary research and education in microbial sciences here at Illinois.
Becky Smith, DVM, MS, PhD
Associate Professor of Epidemiology
Department of Pathobiology
Becky Smith is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, where she leads research on infectious disease surveillance, forecasting, and control. Her work focuses on the development of mathematical models to understand disease transmission at the human-animal-environment interface, with applications in vector-borne, water-borne, and zoonotic diseases. Rebecca holds a PhD in Epidemiology from Cornell University, an MS in Biosecurity and Risk Analysis from Kansas State University, and a DVM from Cornell. She also collaborates with several interdisciplinary research institutes, including the Institute for Genomic Biology and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where she integrates data-driven models to improve public health decision-making. With a background in both applied economics and statistics, her research interests include exploring biases in data use and optimizing biosecurity measures for disease prevention. Rebecca is also deeply involved in One Health initiatives, contributing to the understanding of disease genomics and antimicrobial resistance. Her expertise extends to teaching and mentoring within the university’s epidemiology and biomedical sciences programs.
Do you have a personal story to share or path that led to your interest in this area of study?
When I was in my second year of vet school, I took a dairy farm management elective taught by the epidemiology faculty at Cornell. I had always loved math and big-picture thinking, but I had been focused entirely on veterinary medicine and didn’t know there was a way I could join the two. The next summer, I was working in an internship at the viral diagnostics lab for the Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research, and everything just clicked into place – infectious diseases, epidemiology, and global One Health.
How will your work help to improve society or reach people?
Since my research is focused on infectious disease control, I think we’ve all experienced its impact lately. I love to work closely with the people out in the field – public health, vector control, clinicians (both human and animal focused) – to develop tools that will make their work easier and better. Sometimes that’s figuring out how to use a diagnostic test most effectively, other times it’s just making sure your nurse practitioner knows the signs of tick-borne diseases.
What part can researchers in your field play, in and out of the lab, in addressing current local, national, and/or global challenges?
We epidemiologists really focus on understanding the nuance, complexity, and bias in our health data, which is important as we try to address big challenging topics like health disparities, environmental racism, and climate change. It does add a bit of pressure to get it right – we like to say that if a surgeon makes a mistake and one person dies, there’s an investigation, but if an epidemiologist makes a mistake thousands can die with no consequences.
Part of MSI’s mission is to support high quality education and professional development experiences for trainees. How do you support this mission through your teaching and mentorship?
I lean hard into interdisciplinary, team science training – learning to work together with people across a spectrum of expertise and experience.
How does being part of the microbial systems community (MSI) impact your research?
I love how many people I can reach out to at any time to get feedback or input, or to partner in developing something new. If you can’t tell, I rely on collaboration throughout my work – the MSI is a great network builder for finding those collaborators.
Do you want to tell us about any projects or activities that you are particularly excited about right now?
I’m especially excited about a project we have in collaboration with the Illinois Department of Public Health and Argonne National Labs, the Midwest Alliance for Applied Genomic Epidemiology. We’re not just building tools and education to bring pathogen genomics into public health and clinical practice, we’re doing it in a participatory way (thanks to guidance from Dr. Jacinda Dariotis at the Family Resiliency Center). The result is going to be truly impactful!
