Rebecca Bialas, MD

Co-Founder, Chair

Rebecca is a physician and the mother of two children with plasminogen deficiency. She earned her B.A., M.D. and a Masters of Public Health from the University of North Carolina, and completed residency training at Duke. Rebecca co-founded the PLGD Foundation in 2020 after both of her children were diagnosed with the deficiency. She recalls the difficulty of getting a diagnosis for her kids, and the initial loneliness of dealing with a rare illness, and hopes to help other families with PLGD avoid these hardships. In addition to understanding the challenges that patients and their families face on an intimate level, she is well situated within the medical community to identify challenges of rare disease research and to develop relationships with researchers, other physicians, and industry leaders.