Daisy Flores Rangel
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Microbiologist
Orange County Mosquito And Vector Control District
B.A., Biology, 2007
M.S., Biology. 2011
Flores Rangel is a distinguished microbiologist and public health scientist whose career sits at the critical intersection of disease surveillance, research, and community protection. As the microbiologist for the Orange County Mosquito and Vector Control District, she manages the Microbiology Laboratory responsible for testing vectors for a range of diseases, including West Nile Virus, Dengue, Zika, and Lyme disease — work that directly safeguards the health of communities across the region.
At the Vector Control District, she has led research projects that have broadened the understanding of rodenticide resistance in rodents commonly found in the region, developed molecular tests to expand surveillance efforts to include dog heartworm, rat lungworm, and typhus, and identified new species of vectors, parasites, and midges.
Her scientific foundation includes investigation of the immune system of the white leghorn chicken at the Institute of Neurobiology in Querétaro, Mexico. At California State University, °µÍøÊÓÆµ (CSULB), her master's thesis helped identify the promoter elements that control the expression of high light induction proteins. She earned her Ph.D. in genetic, molecular, and cellular biology from the University of Southern California, where her dissertation research advanced the understanding of lung cancer through rodent model studies.