Dr. James W. LeDuc directs the Program on Global Health in the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He also serves as deputy director of the Galveston National Laboratory. Previously, he served as the coordinator for influenza for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and was the director of the Division of Viral and Rickettsial Diseases in the CDC National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID). He began his professional career as a field biologist with the Smithsonian Institution’s African Mammal Project in West Africa. He then served for 23 years as an officer in the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. He joined CDC in 1992, was assigned to the World Health Organization as a Medical Officer, and later became the associate director for global health at NCID. His research interests include the epidemiology of arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers and global health. He has participated in a number of National Research Council studies.
Dr. Ralph Baric received his BS from North Carolina State University in 1977. He obtained his PhD from the Department of Microbiology of North Carolina State University in 1982, studying alpha-virus–host interaction and pathogenesis under the direction of Robert E. Johnston. He continued his postdoctoral training on coronavirus replication and pathogenesis under the direction of Michael M. C. Lai at the University of Southern California. In 1986, Dr. Baric was hired as an assistant professor in the Department of Parasitology and Laboratory Practice, and he is currently a professor in the Department of
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 137
Appendix B
Committee Member and Staff Biographies
CHAIR
Dr. James W. LeDuc directs the Program on Global Health in the Institute for
Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
He also serves as deputy director of the Galveston National Laboratory. Previ -
ously, he served as the coordinator for influenza for the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and was the director of
the Division of Viral and Rickettsial Diseases in the CDC National Center for
Infectious Diseases (NCID). He began his professional career as a field biologist
with the Smithsonian Institution’s African Mammal Project in West Africa. He
then served for 23 years as an officer in the U.S. Army Medical Research and
Development Command. He joined CDC in 1992, was assigned to the World
Health Organization as a Medical Officer, and later became the associate direc -
tor for global health at NCID. His research interests include the epidemiology
of arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers and global health. He has partici -
pated in a number of National Research Council studies.
MEMBERS
Dr. Ralph Baric received his BS from North Carolina State University in 1977.
He obtained his PhD from the Department of Microbiology of North Carolina
State University in 1982, studying alpha-virus–host interaction and pathogen -
esis under the direction of Robert E. Johnston. He continued his postdoctoral
training on coronavirus replication and pathogenesis under the direction of
Michael M. C. Lai at the University of Southern California. In 1986, Dr. Baric
was hired as an assistant professor in the Department of Parasitology and
Laboratory Practice, and he is currently a professor in the Department of
OCR for page 137
8 APPENDIX B
Epidemiology and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During his early training, Dr. Baric
was a Harvey Weaver Scholar for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and
an established investigator for the American Heart Association in association
with his studies of coronavirus replication, cross-species transmission, persis -
tence, evolution, and pathogenesis. He is a member of the Editorial Board of
the Journal of Virology and a senior editor for PLoS Pathogens. Dr. Baric is
a permanent member of a National Institutes of health (NIH) study section
(VirB); has been a consultant for the World Health Organization, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, and NIH; and has served on various in-
stitutional recombinant-DNA review committees. He has published over 130
peer-reviewed manuscripts, including several in Science, the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and Nature Medi-
cine, and his research efforts are supported by several NIH research grants. Dr.
Baric’s expertise is primarily in norovirus molecular evolution and susceptibility
and in coronavirus reverse genetics, synthetic genome reconstruction, patho -
genesis, vaccine design, and cross-species transmission of viruses, often using
the SARS coronavirus or noroviruses as models.
Dr. Roger G. Breeze received his veterinary degree in 1968 and his PhD in
veterinary pathology in 1973, both from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
He was engaged in teaching, diagnostic pathology, and research on respiratory
and cardiovascular diseases at the University of Glasgow Veterinary School
from 1968 to 1977 and at Washington State University College of Veterinary
Medicine from 1977 to 1987, where he was professor and chair of the Depart-
ment of Microbiology and Pathology. From 1984 to 1987, he was deputy direc -
tor of the Washington Technology Center, the state’s high-technology sciences
initiative, based in the College of Engineering of the University of Washington.
In 1987, he was appointed director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a Biosafety Level 3 facility for
research and diagnosis related to the world’s most dangerous livestock diseases.
In that role, he initiated research on the genomic and functional genomic basis
of disease pathogenesis, diagnosis, and control of livestock RNA and DNA vi -
rus infections. That work became the basis of U.S. defense against natural and
deliberate infection with those and led to his involvement in the early 1990s
in biologic-weapons defense and proliferation prevention. From 1995 to 1998,
Dr. Breeze directed research programs in 20 laboratories in the Southeast for
the USDA Agricultural Research Service before going to Washington, D.C., to
establish biologic-weapons defense research programs for USDA. He received
the Distinguished Executive Award from President Clinton in 1998 for his
work at Plum Island and in biodefense. Since 2004, he has been chief execu -
tive officer of Centaur Science Group, which provides consulting services in
biodefense. His main commitment is to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s
OCR for page 137
APPENDIX B
Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program in Europe, the Caucasus,
and Central Asia.
Dr. R. Mark Buller is widely recognized as a leader in the field of viral patho-
genesis. His current research focuses on the interplay between the genetic
expression of orthopoxviruses—such as monkeypox virus, ectromelia virus,
and vaccinia virus—and the hosts’ response to infection. Dr. Buller applies this
work to the development of animal models for the evaluation of antivirals and
vaccines for smallpox. He currently serves as a professor at Saint Louis Univer-
sity, Missouri, in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.
Dr. Buller is also director of the Aerosol Biology Core of the multi-institutional
Midwest Regional Center for Excellence in Biodefense and Emerging Infectious
Diseases Research. Before joining Saint Louis University, he was head of the
Poxvirus Pathogenesis Group at the National Institute of Allergy and Infec -
tious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Buller holds a PhD in
virology from the Institute of Virology in Glasgow. He has published over 130
peer-reviewed scientific articles, reviews, and book chapters, and is a member
of the editorial review boards of major scientific publications. Dr. Buller has
also served as an invited reviewer, committee member, or speaker on the topic
of bioterrorism and biomedical research.
Dr. Sean R. Eddy is a group leader at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s
Janelia Farm Research Campus outside Washington, D.C. His research inter-
ests are in the development of computational algorithms for genome-sequence
analysis. He is the author of several widely used software tools for biologic
sequence analysis, including a software package called HMMER; a coauthor of
the Pfam database of protein domains; and a coauthor of the book Biological Se-
quence Analysis: Probabilistic Models of Proteins and Nucleic Acids (Cambridge
University Press, 1998). He received a bachelor’s degree from the California
Institute of Technology and a PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder,
and he was a postdoctoral fellow at NeXagen Pharmaceuticals and at the MRC
Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He was on the faculty of the Department of
Genetics of the Washington University School of Medicine for 11 years before
moving to Janelia Farm.
Dr. Stanley Falkow is the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor of Mi-
crobiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He
formulated molecular Koch’s postulates, which have guided the study of the
microbial determinants of infectious diseases since the late 1980s. Dr. Falkow
received his BS from the University of Maine and went on to earn his PhD from
Brown University. He discovered that infectious microorganisms use genes that
are activated only inside host cells. Dr. Falkow has published numerous articles
and has served on the editorial boards of several professional publications. In
OCR for page 137
0 APPENDIX B
addition, he has received numerous awards for his achievements in science,
including the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in
Infectious Disease Research, the Altemeier Medal from the Surgical Infectious
Diseases Society of America, the Howard Taylor Ricketts Award Lecture at the
University of Chicago, and the Paul Ehrlich–Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize. In
2003, he received the Abbott Lifetime Achievement Award from the American
Society for Microbiology and the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology
from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). He received the Robert Koch
Award in 2000. Dr. Falkow was president of the American Society for Micro-
biology in 1997–1998. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1997 and
received the Maxwell-Finland Award from the National Foundation for Infec -
tious Diseases in 1999. Also in 1999, he was named an honorary doctor of sci -
ence by the University of Guelph, Canada, and received the University of Maine
Alumni Career Award. He has received honorary doctorates in Europe and the
United States. Dr. Falkow is a member of NAS and the National Academy of
Arts and Sciences. He is also an elected fellow of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science and a foreign member of the UK Royal Society.
Dr. Falkow was nominated twice for a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
In 2008, Dr. Falkow received the Lasker Award for medical research.
Ms. Rachel E. Levinson, a 25-year veteran of science policy at the national
level, is the director of the Arizona State University (ASU) Washington office
and is responsible for special projects and research initiatives in the Office
of the Vice President for Research and Economic Affairs. She joined ASU in
2005 as the director of the Government and Industry Liaison Office, Biodesign
Institute at Arizona State University. Ms. Levinson heads an office responsible
for facilitating mutually beneficial relationships between university researchers,
federal funding agencies, and private-sector entities. Most recently, she was with
the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the Pres-
ident, where she was assistant director of life sciences. She began her career as
a biologist at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH). She advanced to become deputy director of the NIH Office of Recom -
binant DNA and senior policy adviser in the Office of Technology Transfer.
Ms. Levinson earned her BS in zoology from the University of Maryland at
College Park and her MA in science, technology, and public policy from the
George Washington University School of Public and International Affairs.
Dr. John Mulligan founded Blue Heron Biotechnology in 1999 after a decade
of genomics research, including establishment and management of one of the
two Human Genome Centers at Stanford University and direction of genomics
research at Darwin Molecular. Blue Heron Biotechnology is a pioneer in and
leader of the gene-synthesis market.
OCR for page 137
APPENDIX B
Dr. Alison D. O’Brien is a professor in and chair of the Department of Micro-
biology and Immunology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health
Sciences. She is a past president of the American Society for Microbiology. She
received her PhD from Ohio State University in 1976. Research in Dr. O’Brien’s
laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms by which the Shiga toxins
from enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) contribute to hemorrhagic
colitis and the hemolytic uremic syndrome, the involvement of toxins from
uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) in the host response to urinary tract infections,
and development of therapeutics against infections caused by Bacillus anthracis
and B. cereus.
Dr. Francisco Ochoa-Corona, a forensic plant pathologist, specializes in deliver-
ing and developing reference diagnostics for exotic, naturalized, and indigenous
plant viruses and other phytopathogens of relevance to agricultural biosecurity.
His work is applicable to plant pathogens that can be intercepted at the border
or detected through general surveillance in field settings or in transitional facili-
ties. Dr. Ochoa-Corona’s research in plant pathology contributes scientific input
to regulatory officials regarding plant health emergencies. He joined Oklahoma
State University in 2008 from the Investigation and Diagnostic Centre of Bi -
osecurity New Zealand, in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, where he
was principal adviser in virology.
Prof. Jane S. Richardson earned a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College
and a master’s degree from Harvard University in 1966. Since 1970, she has
been at Duke University Medical Center, where she and her husband, Da-
vid, work together in investigating the three-dimensional structure of proteins
and RNA. They were early pioneers in protein crystallography, in molecular
computer graphics, and in the field of de novo protein design, proposing and
then making novel amino-acid sequences designed to fold into specific 3D
structures. Prof. Richardson was the developer of ribbon drawings of protein
structures, originally done by hand but since universally adopted in molecular
graphics. She identified many well-known structural motifs, such as the helix
N-cap, and has recently concentrated on new methods for the validation and
improvement of protein and RNA crystal structures. She became a MacArthur
Fellow in 1985, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1991, and a
member of the Institute of Medicine in 2006, and she was an assessor for last
year’s CASP8 structure predictions.
Dr. Margaret Riley is a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst (Umass Amherst). She received her PhD in population genetics from
Harvard University and performed postdoctoral research in microbial popula -
tion genetics with a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellowship in Molecular Evolution. She
OCR for page 137
APPENDIX B
joined the faculty of Yale in 1991 and recently moved to UMass Amherst. She
has a broad set of research interests that range from studies of experimental
evolution of microorganisms to development of novel antimicrobials and re -
definition of the microbial species concept. Dr. Riley studies the evolution of
microbial diversity with an emphasis on the ecology and evolution of microbial
toxins. Her recent work has revealed that the production of toxins is a primary
force in the generation and maintenance of microbial diversity. Those studies
led to an interest in applying ecologic and evolutionary theory to the design
of novel antimicrobials for use in animal and human health. She is cofounder
of Origin Antimicrobials, Inc., whose mission is to discover and refine novel
antimicrobials to address the challenge of antibiotic resistance. Dr. Riley is the
director of the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Program and the director
of the Museum of Natural History at UMass Amherst. From 1999 to 2002, she
chaired the Gordon conference on molecular evolution; from 2003 to 2005, she
chaired the Gordon conference on microbial population biology and evolution.
She is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Mr. Tom Slezak has been involved with bioinformatics at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (LLNL) for 30 years after receiving a BS and an MS in
computer science from the University of California, Davis. He is currently the
associate program leader for informatics for the Global Security Program ef -
forts at LLNL. He was involved in the Human Genome Program from 1987
to 2000, leading the informatics efforts at LLNL and then the Department of
Energy Joint Genome Institute from 1997 to 2000. In 2000, he began to build
a pathogen bioinformatics team at LLNL, pioneering a novel whole-genome
analysis approach to DNA signature design. His team developed signature tar-
gets for multiple human pathogens that were used at the 2002 Winter Olympic
Games under the BASIS program and later adapted for use nationwide in the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) BioWatch program. Under a close
collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the LLNL
team has been called on for computational help on smallpox, SARS, monkey -
pox, avian influenza, and numerous other diseases. In addition to continuing
work on human and agricultural pathogens, Mr. Slezak team is focusing on
signatures of mechanisms of virulence, antibiotic resistance, and evidence of
genetic engineering. They have been working on detecting novel, engineered,
and advanced biothreats for several years, leveraging high-risk Information
Technology Industry Council and DHS funding. Mr. Slezak has chaired or
served on multiple advisory boards, including those of the rice genome project,
mouse and maize genetics databases, the spruce tree genome project (Canada),
plant pathogens, and a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
sequencing center contract renewal.
OCR for page 137
APPENDIX B
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL STAFF
Dr. India Hook-Barnard is a program officer with the Board on Life Sciences
of the National Research Council. She came to the National Academies from
the National Institutes of Health where she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow
from 2003 to 2008. Her research investigating the molecular mechanism of gene
expression focused on the interactions between RNA polymerase and promoter
DNA. Dr. Hook-Barnard earned her PhD from the Dept. of Molecular Micro -
biology and Immunology at the University of Missouri. Her graduate research
examined translational regulation and ribosome binding in Escherichia coli. At
the National Academies, she contributes to projects in a variety of exciting topic
areas. Much of her current work is related to issues of biosecurity, microbiol -
ogy, and genomics. She is the study director or staff officer for several ongoing
projects including the U.S. Canada Regional Committee for the International
Brain Research Organization, Animal Models for Assessing Countermeasures
to Bioterrorism Agents, and Framework for Developing a New Taxonomy of
Disease.
Mr. Carl-Gustav Anderson is a senior program assistant with the Board on Life
Sciences of the National Research Council. He received a BA in philosophy
from American University in 2009, completing significant research projects
exploring on the philosophy of the Kyoto School. He has worked closely with
the All Women’s Action Society (Malaysia), helping to engage young men in
feminist dialogue and to present a feminist response to the unique identity
politics of contemporary Malaysia. He has focused his research interests on
Buddhist encounters with the West, with particular emphasis on Buddhist
responses to Western feminism, communism, transcendental philosophy, and
existentialism.
Since joining the Board on Life Sciences in 2009, he has served as senior
program assistant for Responsible Research with Biological Select Agents and
Toxins (2009) and Challenges and Opportunities for Education about Dual Use
Issues in Life Sciences Research (2010). In addition to several consensus com-
mittees, he also serves as senior program assistant for the United States-Canada
Regional Committee to the International Brain Research Organization.
OCR for page 137