Yasuko Rikihisa
Professor, Department of Veterinary Biosciences
College of Veterinary Medicine

Yasuko Rikihisa is one of the world’s leading authorities on certain tick-borne diseases that infect food- and fiber-producing animals, companion animals and humans. Her work spans the entire range of discovery — from basic research to commercialization — and her efforts have both added to the understanding of many of those diseases and improved products to limit their spread.

“Dr. Rikihisa is the world’s pre-eminent scholar in studies of ehrlichiosis, a life-threatening and economically important global disease of man and animals,” her nominator wrote. “Her scholarship has had broad impact, shifting the direction of research nationally and internationally.”

In collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rikihisa cultivated canine ehrlichiosis, or E. canis, and cloned and sequenced some of the outer membrane proteins — information that is critical to the development of effective vaccines — and further demonstrated that these proteins could be used in diagnosing the disease.

In 2000, her outer membrane protein patent portfolio was licensed worldwide. The resulting commercial serum test for E. canis remains the standard of care for the annual parasite screening of animals globally. The test is included in the annual health-screening panel for all dogs. Revenues from licenses of her intellectual property and assets portfolio have made the College of Veterinary Medicine the leading commercialization-producing college at Ohio State for the past five years.

She has more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers, 25 book chapters and more than $19.8 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health and other sponsors. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received Ohio State’s Distinguished Scholar and Innovator of the Year awards.

She also has mentored more than 50 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers at Ohio State and has received her college’s Teaching Excellence Award for Graduate Education. Her former students and postdocs have gone on to some of the most prestigious universities, private companies and governmental agencies in the world.

She has represented Ohio State with her service on numerous editorial boards and National Institutes of Health study sections, and she has served on many high-level committees at the university and college levels, including the Discovery Themes proposal review panel.

Rikihisa earned her bachelor’s at the University of Waseda (Japan) and her master’s and doctorate at the University of Tokyo. She has been at Ohio State since 1986.

From June 12th, 2014 onCampus