Rebecca Campbell (scientist)

Rebecca Elaine Lyle Campbell is an American–New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in understanding the regulation of fertility, and polycystic ovary syndrome.

Academic career
Campbell earned a PhD at the Oregon Health and Science University in 2002, with a thesis on neuropeptide Y and fertility. Campbell joined the Centre for Neuroendocrinology at the University of Otago as a postdoctoral researcher, before joining the faculty in 2009. She was promoted to associate professor in 2018 and full professor in 2022. She is deputy director of the Centre for Neuroendocrinology, and has been the Associate Dean Research for the School of Biomedical Sciences.

Campbell's is a neuroendocrinologist, with a particular interest in how fertility is regulated by the brain. Campbell studies how androgen levels affect the brain in women with polycystic ovary syndrome. Her team have identified brain changes that might lead to possible treatments for PCOS. Campbell is also interested in other non-fertility-related roles of gonadotropin-releasing hormone ( GnRH ) neurons, and in 2023 was awarded a Marsden grant to study the role of distinct populations of GnRH neurons in the brain. Campbell was the principal investigator on three earlier Marsden grants, Primary cilia and the central regulation of fertility (funded in 2010), Functional dissection of a novel GABAergic pathway in the brain circuitry controlling fertility (2014), and Androgen excess and the female brain (funded in 2017). She was an associate investigator on another 2017 Marsden grant Defining the brain circuits that interface hunger state with reward signalling to guide food consumption.

Campbell also leads a Health Research Council-funded project to research how the brain controls fertility.

Campbell is a member of the Maurice Wilkins Centre of Research Excellence Leadership Forum.

Honours and awards
Campbell was awarded the School of Biomedical Sciences Distinguished Researcher Award in 2020.