Security Advisor to both Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. From 1982 to 1989, he was Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm. In this capacity, he advised and assisted a wide range of U.S. and foreign corporate leaders on global joint venture opportunities, strategic planning, and risk assessment. A graduate from West Point, his 29-year military career in the Air Force included service as Deputy National Security Advisor; as Professor of Russian History at West Point; as Assistant Air Attaché in Belgrade, Yugoslavia; as Head of the Political Science Department at the Air Force Academy; in Air Force Long Range Plans; in the Office of the Secretary of Defense International Security Assistance; as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and as Military Assistant to President Nixon. Out of uniform, he continued in a public policy capacity by serving on the President’s Advisory Committee on Arms Control, the Commission on Strategic Forces, and the President’s Special Review Board, also known as the Tower Commission. He currently serves on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. He earned his masters and doctorate degrees in international relations from Columbia University.

Ronald M. Atlas

Ronald Atlas is Professor of Biology and Public Health, and Co-director of the Center for Health Hazards Preparedness at the University of Louisville. He received his BS degree from the State University at Stony Brook, his masters of science and doctorate degrees from Rutgers the State University, and a DSc (honoris causa) from the University of Guelph. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on Mars Life Detection. He is chair of NASA’s Planetary Protection Subcommittee, co-chair of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Task Force on Biodefense. He previously served as President of ASM, was a member of the NIH Recombinant Advisory committee, was on the Board of Governors of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), and was a member of the DHS Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee. His early research focused on oil spills and he discovered bioremediation as part of his doctoral studies. Later he turned to the molecular detection of pathogens in the environment which forms the basis for biosensors to detect biothreat agents. He is author of nearly 300 manuscripts and 20 books. He is a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology and has received the ASM Award for Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the