Director, Texas A&M Institute for Preclinical Studies
Founder of TVCR

Founder of NVCR , Theresa W Fossum, D.V.M., M.S., Ph.D., Diplomate American College of Veterinary Surgeons (ACVS), is the Executive Director of the Texas A&M Institute for Preclinical Studies (TIPS) and the Vice Chancellor for Global and Corporate Partnerships at Texas A&M University, in College Station, Texas. Dr. Fossum also serves as the director for Cardiothoracic Surgery and Biomedical Devices at Texas A&M’s Michael E. DeBakey Institute.

 

Dr. Fossum is a world-renowned surgeon and author of Small Animal Surgery, the most widely used academic text on the subject. Her main interests include diseases of the respiratory and cardiovascular system, including cardiopulmonary bypass procedures, and she is a frequently cited expert on chylothorax and other respiratory and surgical diseases. She is the principle investigator of numerous research projects, and as director of TIPS, oversees the leading national program to utilize comprehensive preclinical studies under Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) and biomedical imaging to markedly enhance the quality and speed of drug and medical device development.

 

A member of the Board of Governors for the Foundation for Biomedical Research since 2000, Dr. Fossum also serves on the Board of Directors of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. In 2004, she received the Texas Society for Biomedical Research Award in recognition and appreciation of her many years of dedicated service to science, research and medical communities in the state of Texas. The same year, Dr. Fossum, along with Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, founded the CARE Foundation to provide a veterinary medicine infrastructure to perform groundbreaking research using animals with spontaneous disease. She serves as president of this organization, whose research helps the participating animals and is more predictive of how disease will react in humans.

 

Dr. Fossum is a graduate of Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.  She completed her surgical residency and master’s degree at the Ohio State University, and received her board certification in surgery (American College of Veterinary Surgeons) in 1987. Dr. Fossum joined the faculty at Texas A&M later that year and in 1992, she completed her doctorate in veterinary microbiology at Texas A&M.