Robin Patel

Robin Patel is an American microbiologist and was the 2019–2020 president of the American Society for Microbiology. She is the Elizabeth P. and Robert E. Allen Professor of Individualized Medicine at the Mayo Clinic and director of the Mayo Clinic's Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, where she studies biofilms, antimicrobial resistance, periprosthetic joint infection and diagnostic testing of bacteria.
Patel earned a BA degree in chemistry from Princeton University, graduating "Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa," and "Sigma Xi" in 1985, and an MD from McGill University, graduating in 1989. At McGill University, she was supported by a Greville Smith scholarship and received several awards/prizes (Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Besner Prize, Mosby Scholarship Book Award, Newell W. Philpott Prize, Osler Medical Aid Foundation Bursary & Commonwealth Medical Elective Bursary and Elizabeth Ann Munro Gordon Prize). She then completed a residency in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic (during which she received a Residency Program Outstanding Achievement Award), followed by fellowships in infectious diseases (during which she received the William H. J. Summerskill Award in Subspecialty Trainee Research and the Joseph E. Geraci Award for Infectious Diseases Outstanding Achievement) and clinical microbiology. 
She began working at the Mayo Clinic after the completion of her fellowships in 1996. In 2003, she received a Department of Medicine Laureate Award - Mayo Clinic, and in 2008 an Outstanding Woman in Medicine award from the Mayo Chapters of the AMSA & AMWA. In 2012, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. She was an editor for the "Journal of Clinical Microbiology" from 2009 to 2019. In 2015, she was honored with the American Society for Microbiology BD Award for Research in Clinical Microbiology and a Mayo Medical School Distinguished Service Award. In 2019, she delivered the Maxwell Finland Award Lecture at IDWeek (Washington, DC). Her biography was published in the "Journal of Clinical Microbiology" in 2020.
Early life.
Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, she and her family moved to the suburbs of Montreal, Québec, when she was four years old. Her parents are Barbara A. Foster and Nagin K. Patel, and she has two younger siblings, Janice E Patel and Harish DS Patel. She attended John Rennie High School following which she spent a year at Marianapolis College in Montreal and then matriculated to Princeton University in 1982. 