Biography and education

Dr. David Rodriguez is a first-generation Mexican-American college graduate born and raised in Del Rio, TX, which sits along the US-Mexico border. After transferring from Southwest Texas Junior College, he received both his B.S. (2000) and M.S. (2002) degrees in Biology at Texas State University. He was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship at Texas State University and used it as a springboard to the doctoral program in Zoology at Texas Tech University to research the population genetics of crocodiles. After earning his Ph.D. (2007), Dr. Rodriguez served as the Project Director for a cooperative US Dept. of Education grant at El Centro College in Dallas that endeavored to increase minority participation in STEM fields. He was then awarded a NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to perform research on amphibian pathogens in the New World at Cornell University. In 2015, Dr. Rodriguez joined Texas State University as a faculty member in Biology where he teaches Mycology and Applied Bioinformatics and investigates host-pathogen dynamics in reptiles and amphibians using genetic, genomic, and bioinformatic tools. Specifically, he has been investigating the amphibian-killing fungus in temperate and tropical environments and Snake Fungal Disease in Texas. His research also leverages a portable genetics lab to teach and perform genetic analyses in the field.