Robin Patel is the Elizabeth P. and Robert E. Allen Professor of Individualized Medicine, Professor of Medicine, Professor of Microbiology, Director of the Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, Co-Director of the Clinical Bacteriology Laboratory, Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, and former Chair of the Division of Clinical Microbiology, at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Patel received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Princeton University, where she graduated magna cum laude. From there, she obtained a medical degree from McGill University. Afterwards, Dr. Patel completed Internal Medicine Residency and Fellowships in Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the Mayo Clinic. Since then, she has been involved in setting standards for diagnostic and clinical care of bacterial infections, as evidenced by the (select) positions she has held or holds within the American Society for Microbiology (President, Secretary), American Board of Pathology (Microbiology Test Writing Committee Member), Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (Subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Voting Member), National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Council Member), National Board of Medical Examiners (Microbiology/Immunology Test Material Development Committee Chair), Journal of Clinical Microbiology (Associate Editor), and Clinical Infectious Diseases (Associate Editor). Since the beginning of her tenure at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Patel has focused her research on bacterial infections. Her work focuses on three major areas: (1) improvement of next-generation diagnostic techniques, (2) understanding the inherent biology of periprosthetic infection, and (3) understanding antibiotic resistance through a clinical lens. She has published over 560 peer-reviewed publications and is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is the Director of the Laboratory Center of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group of the National Institutes of Health. In 2022, she received the Mayo Clinic Distinguished Investigator and Hamao Umezawa awards. Dr. Patel is a passionate educator whose continued commitment to mentorship can be translated into a long list of trainees from around the world; she had dedicated immeasurable hours of teaching to train the next generation of laboratory scientists. She has led the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine Microbiology Course since 2001, and in 2021, she received the Mayo Clinic Distinguished Educator award. More information can be found at: https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JCM.01259-20.