Steffanie Strathdee

I'm a Canadian-American infectious disease epidemiologist and professor at the University of California San Diego where I work with my husband, Tom Patterson. When Tom acquired a bacterial 'superbug' infection that was resistant to all antibiotics while we were on vacation in Egypt, my personal life and professional life collided. The story of how a global village of researchers and medical professionals helped me save his life with a 100 year old forgotten cure is the subject of our first book, "The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband From a Deadly Superbug". A large part of my day job now is being a phage wrangler, helping other people who are battling superbug infections at IPATH, the first phage therapy center in North America that I co-founded in 2018. Now that he's recovered, Tom and I enjoyed travelling off the beaten path, birdwatching and hiking; that is, when we're not hunkered down trying to avoid a pandemic. We live in Carlsbad, CA with our rescue cats Paradita and Bonita.