Appendix B
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ON WORKSHOP SPEAKERS
William H. Benson is director of the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory’s Gulf Ecology Division within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Office of Research and Development. Dr. Benson obtained a BS in biology from the Florida Institute of Technology and his MS and PhD in toxicology from the University of Kentucky. In graduate school, he was the first recipient of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Pre-Doctoral Fellowship sponsored by the Procter & Gamble Company. Dr. Benson has published over 100 scientific publications on environmental toxicology and chemistry. His research activities have been directed toward assessing the influence of environmental stressors on health and ecologic conditions. He has conducted research in metal and pesticide bioavailability, reproductive and developmental effects in aquatic organisms, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and the use of indicators in environmental monitoring and assessment. Dr. Benson is a past president of SETAC and has served on its International Council. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is active in several other professional societies. He serves as chair of Dow Chemical Company’s Technical Advisory Board for Toxicology and as cochair of the Coordinating Committee for Development of a Technical Framework and Training for Genomics in EPA.
John L. Butenhoff is a corporate scientist in the Medical Department of 3M. He is responsible for the toxicology and health risk assessment activities associated with legacy perfluorinated alkyl acids that were produced by 3M before 2002. Dr. Butenhoff has been an employee of 3M since 1976 and has held technical and management positions in industrial hygiene, toxicology, and corporate product responsibility. He received his AB in biology from Franklin and Marshall College and his MS in occupational health and PhD in toxicology from the University of Minnesota. He holds an adjunct faculty position in the graduate program in toxicology at the University of Minnesota through the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Medicine, Duluth. Dr. Butenhoff holds professional board certifications by the American Board of Toxicology and the American Academy of Industrial Hygiene.
Richard Di Giulio is professor of environmental toxicology in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University. At Duke, he also serves as director of the Integrated Toxicology Program (a doctoral and postdoctoral training program), director of the Superfund Basic Research Center, and associate director of the Center for Comparative Biology of Vulnerable Populations (all are supported principally by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, NIEHS). He received a BA in comparative literature from the University of Texas at Austin (1972), an MS in wildlife biology from Louisiana State University (1978), and a PhD in environmental toxicology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1982). His research in aquatic and comparative toxicology emphasizes mechanistic studies of chemical toxicity and adaptation, emphasizing metabolism, oxidative stress, and gene interactions. Current studies include an investigation of mechanisms of adaptation, fitness costs, and genetic consequences in a population of killifish (Fundulus) that inhabit a polluted estuary in Virginia; mechanisms by which selected chemicals perturb cardiovascular development in Fundulus; and effects of chemicals on gene expression and regulation in this model. He has organized symposia and workshops and written on the broader subject of interconnections between human health and ecologic integrity. Dr. Di Giulio serves as an adviser for the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and for the Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, is active in the Society of Toxicology , and is on the editorial boards of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment and Toxi-
cologic Sciences. Dr. Di Giulio’s current and recent research has been supported by NIEHS, EPA, and the Office of Naval Research.
Donna Mendrick is the vice president of toxicogenomics at Gene Logic Inc. She was on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry for 8 years, a member of the National Institute of Health Small Business Initiative Research Immunology Study Section for 8 years, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Kidney Foundation of Massachusetts for 4 years. Before joining Gene Logic in 1998, Dr. Mendrick was a group leader in pharmacology at Human Genome Sciences, Inc., where she planned and directed acute and chronic toxicity, developmental, and ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion) studies for investigational new drug submissions; performed in-house pharmacology experiments; and directed project teams. Before joining Human Genome Sciences in 1995, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, where her research focused on renal immunopathology and endothelial biology. Dr. Mendrick received her PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo in immunopathology.
Stephen Nesnow is a senior scientist in the Environmental Carcinogenesis Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory. Dr. Nesnow received his BS in chemistry from Bucknell University and his MS and PhD degrees in organic chemistry from New York University. In graduate school, he received a New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science Predoctoral Fellowship. After two postdoctoral fellowships at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, he joined the faculties of the University of Wisconsin and the University of North Carolina. Dr. Nesnow joined EPA in 1977. He served as the branch chief of the Biochemistry and Pathobiology Branch for 20 years. Dr. Nesnow has published more than 214 scientific publications in chemical carcinogenesis, with emphasis on metabolism, tumorigenesis, DNA adducts, and complex mixtures. He has received a number of awards from EPA, including a Bronze Medal and nine Scientific and Technological Achievement Awards. Dr. Nesnow is a member of the Editorial Boards of Chemical Research in Toxicology, Cancer Letters, and The Journal of Environmental Science and Health and has served as a member of the Aspen Cancer Conference Advisory Committee, as a member of the Board of
Governors of the International Symposium on Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons, and on the International Agency for Research on Cancer Working Groups. Dr. Nesnow has been an invited speaker at many national and international symposia and has served as organizer and session chair at many of them. He serves as an adjunct professor in the School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Susan Sumner, who was with Paradigm Genetics at the time of this workshop, is now taking a lead role at RTI International in the development of a biomarker discovery program in metabolomics. She was trained (1982-1986) as a physical chemist with a specialty in spectroscopy at North Carolina State University (NCSU) after completion of undergraduate studies in the NCSU Department of Chemistry (1979-1982). She completed a 2-year staff fellowship (1987-1989) in biologic applications of spectroscopy at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Dr. Sumner was employed by the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology for 13 years, where she served as a principle investigator and study director. Her research focused on mechanisms of chemical-induced toxicity, cross-species extrapolation, and the relevance of animal models in assessment of human health risk. Dr. Sumner continued developing and applying spectroscopic methods for biomarker discovery and elucidation of biochemical mechanisms while employed at Paradigm Genetics, Inc. (2002-2004). She has directed both nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry facilities for metabolite characterization and metabolomic analysis. She joined the Health Sciences Division of RTI International in August 2004.
Russell Thomas is an associate investigator at CIIT Centers for Health Research in the Division of Computational Biology. He is the director of the Functional Genomics Research Program and the Gene Expression Core Facility. Dr. Thomas completed his PhD in Toxicology at Colorado State University and focused on constructing pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic models of the effects of chlorinated benzenes. After his doctoral studies, Dr. Thomas performed postdoctoral research in molecular biology and genomics at the McArdle Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. In addition to the doctoral degree, he has earned a master’s degree in radiation ecology and an undergraduate degree in chemistry. Before coming to CIIT, Dr. Thomas worked in bioinformatics in the biotechnology industry and was the head of the genomics and toxicology groups at a biopharmaceutical company. Dr.
Thomas’s research focuses on integrating genomics, bioinformatics, and computational biology into a systems-biology approach to specific toxicologic responses.
Frank A. Witzmann received his PhD in physiology from Marquette University and now serves as professor of cellular and integrative physiology at Indiana University School of Medicine. He has applied large-scale two-dimensional electrophoretic analyses in a variety of paradigms since the middle 1980s and currently directs the use of gel-based proteomics approaches in projects concerning various aspects of toxicology, pharmacology, vascular biology, and central nervous system physiology. He has published over 90 refereed manuscripts, book chapters, and technical reports. He regularly participates in grant and program reviews for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Department of Defense; is a past president of the Electrophoresis Society (USA); and serves as associate editor of Briefings in Functional Genomics and Proteomics and on the editorial board of Analytical Biochemistry.
