Fitzgerald - Leadership

Dr. Collette Fitzgerald, PhD,

Associate Director for Science

Division of Laboratory Systems (DLS)

Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services

Office of Public Health Scientific Services

Dr. Collette Fitzgerald is the Associate Director for Science in the Division of Laboratory Systems (DLS). She has 18 years of experience working in the Enteric Diseases Laboratory Branch where she most recently served as Team Lead of the National Enteric Reference and Outbreak (NERO) Team. Fitzgerald’s strong leadership led NERO to enhance laboratory safety and embrace whole genome sequencing and Quality Management Systems.

Dr. Fitzgerald and her team played a critical role in food safety by ensuring health partners and collaborators have the necessary skills and tools they need to perform accurate laboratory-based surveillance and outbreak response for enteric pathogens. With over 25 years of laboratory experience working on Campylobacter and related organisms, she is recognized as a national and international subject matter expert on this pathogen group.

For the past two years, Dr. Fitzgerald co-chaired a national Culture Independent Diagnostic Tests regulatory workgroup with the initial goals of identifying barriers and developing strategies to ensure continued flow of specimens and isolates to public health. Additionally, Dr. Fitzgerald is the current CDC chair on a national workgroup developing Best Laboratory Practices for Diagnosis of Campylobacter for Clinical and Public Health Laboratories.

Dr. Fitzgerald earned her PhD in Molecular Microbiology from the University of Lancaster, United Kingdom, and a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry with a concentration in Chemistry from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.