Rebecca Katz is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. She is a professor and director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security and holds joint appointments in Georgetown University Medical Center and the School of Foreign Service. She teaches courses on global health diplomacy, global health security, and emerging infectious diseases in the Science, Technology, and International Affairs; Security Studies; and Global Infectious Disease programs, and she is the faculty director of the graduate certificate in health diplomacy. Prior to coming to Georgetown in 2016, she spent ten years at The George Washington University as faculty in the Milken Institute School of Public Health.

From 2004 to 2019, Katz was a consultant to the Department of State, working on issues related to the Biological Weapons Convention, pandemic influenza, and disease surveillance. She returned to the Department of State from January 2021 to December 2024 as a senior advisor on the global COVID-19 response and global health security.

Katz received her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College, an MPH from Yale University, and a PhD from Princeton University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior fellow in the pandemic preparedness program at PAX sapiens.