Fee Zimmermann is a veterinarian specialized in outbreak investigations in the One Health context. As a PhD student at Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, she studied the novel Anthrax causing pathogen Bacillus cereus biovar anthracis, which is responsible for deaths in numerous wildlife species in West and Central Africa (Hoffmann & Zimmermann, Nature 2017). During this time, she was part of an interdisciplinary mission to Guinea investigating the origin of the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic. From 2016 to 2022, Fee Zimmermann worked at the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology (IMB) in Munich in the Department of Medical Bio-Reconnaissance & Verification. Here she was responsible for veterinary diagnostics in the rapidly deployable laboratory for the worldwide investigation of unusual disease outbreaks and suspected use of biological weapons. Her responsibilities also included developing field diagnostic assays, as well as leading a project to promote biosecurity in the Sahel. In 2022, Fee Zimmermann assumed leadership of the One Health Surveillance unit at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health in Greifswald, Germany. Her passion is to bring people from different scientific fields together and to bring state-of-the-art methods into the field.

Selected Publications

Gummelt C, Dupke S, Howaldt S, Zimmermann F, Scholz HC, Laue M, Klee SR. Analysis of sporulation in Bacillus cereus biovar anthracis which contains an insertion in the gene for the sporulation factor σK. Pathogens. 2023;12(12):1442. DOI: 10.3390/pathogens12121442

Braun P, Zimmermann F, Walter M, Mantel S, Aistleitner K, et al. In-depth analysis of Bacillus anthracis 16S rRNA genes and transcripts reveals intra- and intergenomic diversity and facilitates anthrax detection. mSystems. 2021;7(1):e01361-21. DOI: 10.1128/mSystems.01361-21

Zimmermann F, Köhler SM, Nowak K, Dupke S, Barduhn A, Düx A, Lang A, De Nys HM, Gogarten JF, Grunow R, Couacy-Hymann E, Wittig RM, Klee SR, Leendertz FH. Low antibody prevalence against Bacillus cereus biovar anthracis in Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire, indicates high rate of lethal infections in wildlife. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. 2017;11(9):e0005960. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0005960

Hoffmann C, Zimmermann F, Biek R, Kuehl H, Nowak K, Mundry R, Agbor A, Angedakin S, Arandjelovic M, Blankenburg A, Brazolla G, Corogenes K, Couacy-Hymann E, Deschner T, Dieguez P, Dierks K, Düx A, Dupke S, Eshuis H, Formenty P, et al. Persistent anthrax as a major driver of wildlife mortality in a tropical rainforest. Nature. 2017;548(7665):82–86. DOI: 10.1038/nature23309

Saez A, Weiß S, Nowak K, Lapeyre V, Zimmermann F, et al. Investigating the zoonotic origin of the West African Ebola epidemic. EMBO Molecular Medicine. 2015;7(1):17–23. DOI: 10.15252/emmm.201404792