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Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Committee and Staff Biographies

R. Julian Preston, PhD, Chair, has been director of the Environmental Carcinogenesis Division of the US Environmental Protection Agency since 1999. Before then, he served as the senior science advisor at the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, from 1991 to 1999. He was employed at the Biology Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, from 1970 to 1991. He also served as associate director of the Oak Ridge–University of Tennessee Graduate School for Biomedical Sciences. He now holds adjunct professor appointments at Duke University (Integrated Toxicology Programs) and North Carolina State University (Department of Toxicology). Dr. Preston received his BA and MA from Peterhouse, Cambridge University, England, in genetics and his PhD from Reading University, England, in radiation genetics. Dr. Preston is a member of the Board of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, chairman of Committee 1 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, and a member of the US Delegation to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Dr. Preston’s research and current activities have focused on the mechanisms of radiation and chemical carcinogenesis and the approaches to incorporation of these types of data into cancer risk assessments.


Thomas B. Borak, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at Colorado State University. He received a BS in physics from St. John’s University (Minnesota) and a PhD in physics from Vanderbilt University. His research interests are in radiation physics and dosimetry. He has had scientific staff appointments at Fermilab, CERN, and Argonne

Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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National Laboratory. He is a member of the American Physical Society, the Radiation Research Society, and the Health Physics Society, which he recently served on the Board of Directors. Dr. Borak is currently serving on the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements and is certified by the American Board of Health Physics. He has been a consultant to the governor of Colorado on low-level radioactive-waste management and nuclear criticality safety. Dr. Borak was also a member of the BRER Committee on Risk Assessment of Exposure to Radon in Drinking Water (1999).


Catherine Borbas, PhD, MPH, is executive director of the Healthcare Evaluation and Research Foundation in St. Paul, Minnesota. Prior committee memberships include the Committee on Methods for Setting Priorities for Guidelines for the Division of Health Care Services of the Institute of Medicine and the Committee to Review the NCI report on the Exposure of the American People to Iodine-131. Dr. Borbas has published in clinical-guidelines implementation and methods to influence clinical behavior. She earned her PhD in social work and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Minnesota.


A. Bertrand Brill, MD, PhD, is a research professor in the Departments of Radiology and Physics at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Brill earned his MD at the University of Utah and his PhD in Biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. He served in the US Public Health Service (PHS) in Japan at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) from 1957 to 1959 and as the PHS representative to ABCC until 1964. Dr. Brill’s specialty is nuclear medicine, and his major research is in cancer imaging, radiation leukemogenesis, effects of radiation on thyroid function, and effects of diagnostic radioisotope studies, particularly iodine-131. He is a member of the National Cancer Institute-Columbia University Task Group doing a followup study of thyroid disease after the Chornobyl accident. He is a member of the Society of Nuclear Medicine Radiation Effects Committee, the Medical Internal Radiation Dose Committee (MIRD), and the American Thyroid Association. Dr. Brill served as a member of the National Research Council Committees on Atomic Casualties, the BEIR III committee, and the Committee on Assessment of Centers of Disease Control and Prevention Radiation Studies from DOE Contractor Sites.


Thomas Buhl, PhD, CHP, serves as chief scientist for the Health, Safety, and Radiation Protection Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He has been a health physicist in the LANL radiation protection program since 1980, working in radiation-instrumentation development, in vivo bioassay measurements, environmental surveillance, dose assessment, and nuclear-accident dosimetry. He has been an adjunct professor in nuclear engineering at the University of New Mexico since 1994. He served as president of the American Academy of Health Physics (2004) and chair of the American Board of Health

Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Physics (1996). Dr. Buhl is a member of the Health Physics Society and the American Physical Society. Before joining LANL, he worked in the New Mexico Radiation Protection Program, designing and operating an environmental radiation monitoring program in the New Mexico uranium mining area from 1977 to 1980, and later serving as program director on a one-year leave of absence from LANL in 1983-1984. Dr. Buhl received his PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971 and certification in health physics from the American Board of Health Physics in 1981.


Patricia A. Fleming, PhD, is senior associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. She received her bachelor’s degree in sociology and philosophy from Marygrove Collge, Detroit, Michigan and her master’s and doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. While there, she served as the assistant editor of the Philosophy of Science Journal. She has also served as an editor for the international journal ESEP (Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics) and as an external observer (thematic rapporteur) for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)/Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA) Forum on Stakeholder Conference in Ottawa, Canada. She is currently a Board Member of the Swedish-based international group VALDOC (Values on Decisions of Complexity). Her areas of specialization are philosophy of science, epistemology, and applied ethics. She has published and lectured internationally on the ethical and epistemological issues associated with the disposal of high-level nuclear waste, including the use of expert elicitation methodology in site characterization, waste management and indigenous populations, informed consent in stakeholder populations, and circularity in regulatory policy. She teaches courses in applied ethics—particularly ethics and public policy, medical ethics, environmental ethics, and the philosophy of science—at Creighton University.


Shirley Fry, MD, MPH, earned her medical degree from the University of Dublin, Ireland, and her MPH in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She was on the staff of the Center for Human Radiobiology at Argonne National Laboratory (1975-1978). She then joined the staff of the Medical and Health Sciences Division of Oak Ridge Associated Universities where she was a member of the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site’s medical response team and teaching faculty (1978-1995), Director of the Center for Epidemiologic Research (1984-1991), and Assistant Division Director (1991-1995). She later served as Scientific Director of the Washington-based International Consortium for Research on the Health Effects of Radiation, and currently is Clinical Professor, (honorary) in the Department of Radiation Oncology, Indiana University School of Medicine. Her experience and research interests are in the acute and long-term effects of ionizing radiation in human popula-

Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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tions including the US radium dial workers, US nuclear industry workers, and survivors of radiation accidents including the Chornobyl reactor accident. She is the author or coauthor of a number of publications on subjects in these topic areas. She has served on national and international groups with interests in these areas, including the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Battlefield Exposure Criteria, the US/USSR Joint Commission on Chornobyl Nuclear Reactor Safety (JCCNRS)-Health Studies Group, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s International Study of Cancer Risk Among Nuclear Workers. She currently is a member of the National Cancer Institute’s Chornobyl Thyroid Advisory Group, and of the Radiation Advisory Committee of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board. She is a member of the Health Physics Society, the Radiation Research Society, and the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.


Richard Hornung, DrPH, received his doctorate in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health in 1985. His expertise includes survival analysis models, logistic regression, risk assessment, epidemiologic methods, and statistical methods in exposure assessment. He has over 25 years of experience in a wide variety of research, including radiation epidemiology, exposure prediction models, experimental design, environmental studies of lead and allergens, and occupational health. Dr. Hornung joined the Institute for Health Policy and Health Services (IHPHSR), University of Cincinnati, in 1997 after a 24-year career at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), where he was chief of the Health-related Energy Research Branch in 1991-1996; the mission was to conduct epidemiologic studies of Department of Energy workers involved in the nuclear weapons program. He has also done extensive research involving the estimation of lung-cancer risk in uranium miners exposed to radon decay products. He is a member of the Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board as a member of the Radiation Advisory Committee and has served as a member of the White House committee that helped to develop risk standards to be used for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), and as a consultant to BRER’s BEIR IV committee and a reviewer for the BEIR VI report.


Kathleen N. Lohr, MPhil, PhD, is a Distinguished Fellow at RTI International and the founding codirector of the RTI-University of North Carolina Evidence-Based Practice Center. From 1996 to 2000 at RTI, she directed a program of research in health services and health policy involving more than 40 researchers in quality of care, evidence-based practice, Medicare and Medicaid evaluations, health communication, and similar fields; from 2000 to 2003, she was an RTI Chief Scientist. She also holds the rank of research professor in health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Public Health and is a senior research fellow at the UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health

Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Services Research. At UNC, she is a coinvestigator in the Center for Education and Research in Therapeutics and the PROMIS (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System) cooperative agreements. Before working at RTI, Dr. Lohr spent 9 years at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) where she was director of the Division of Health Care Services; she later served on the IOM committee to design a health-outcomes study for veterans of the Gulf War. From 1974 to 1987, she was an analyst with the RAND Corporation, chiefly on the RAND Health Insurance Experiment and in a variety of quality-of-care studies. She is a Fellow of Academy Health (formerly the Association for Health Services Research) and chairs its Distinguished Investigator Committee; she is also a member of advisory boards on quality-of-care measures and organ transplantation and other federally sponsored studies and a member of the advisory board for the North Carolina Partnership to Improve Math and Science education. Dr. Lohr serves as associate editor of Quality of Life Research and as a member of planning committees for the fourth (Sydney, Australia, 2001), fifth (Washington, DC, 2003), and sixth (Toronto, Canada, 2005) International Conferences on the Scientific Basis of Health Services. She has published in quality of care, clinical practice guidelines, evidence-based practice, and health status assessment. She earned a BA in sociology and an MA in education from Stanford University and an MPhil and PhD in public policy analysis from the Rand Graduate School. She was recently awarded the 2005 International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Avedis Donabedian Outcomes Research Lifetime Achievement Award.


Stephen G. Pauker, MD, is vice chairman for clinical affairs and associate physician-in-chief at Tufts-New England Medical Center and professor of medicine and of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. He is an expert in clinical-decision making and evidence-based medicine. Dr. Pauker is a member of the Institute of Medicine. He has served on the Committee to Evaluate the Artificial Heart Program of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the Workshop on the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Process and the Use of Drugs in the Elderly, and the Committee on Thyroid Cancer Screening. His publications and research have addressed decisions about screening for cancer and other conditions. Dr. Pauker earned his MD at Harvard University in 1968 and trained in internal medicine and cardiology at Boston City and Massachusetts General Hospitals and the New England Medical Center, all in Boston. Dr. Pauker practices internal medicine and cardiology.

National Research Council Staff

Isaf Al-Nabulsi, PhD, is a senior program officer with the Board on Radiation Effects Research. She received her MS in radiation biology from Georgetown University and her PhD in biomedicinal chemistry from the School of Pharmacy

Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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of the University of Maryland at Baltimore. Her research interests include molecular mechanisms of DNA damage and repair, cytogenetic techniques, molecular mechanisms of tumor radioresponsiveness, the influence of hypoxic cells on the outcome of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, radiation dosimetry, and epidemiology. She joined the National Research Council staff in 2000 and has directed 12 studies that have produced five reports, six letter reports, and one interim report. She is a member of the Radiation Research Society and the Health Physics Society.

Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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Suggested Citation:"Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2005. Assessment of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11279.
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The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was set up by Congress in 1990 to compensate people who have been diagnosed with specified cancers and chronic diseases that could have resulted from exposure to nuclear-weapons tests at various U.S. test sites. Eligible claimants include civilian onsite participants, downwinders who lived in areas currently designated by RECA, and uranium workers and ore transporters who meet specified residence or exposure criteria. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which oversees the screening, education, and referral services program for RECA populations, asked the National Academies to review its program and assess whether new scientific information could be used to improve its program and determine if additional populations or geographic areas should be covered under RECA. The report recommends Congress should establish a new science-based process using a method called "probability of causation/assigned share" (PC/AS) to determine eligibility for compensation. Because fallout may have been higher for people outside RECA-designated areas, the new PC/AS process should apply to all residents of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, and overseas US territories who have been diagnosed with specific RECA-compensable diseases and who may have been exposed, even in utero, to radiation from U.S. nuclear-weapons testing fallout. However, because the risks of radiation-induced disease are generally low at the exposure levels of concern in RECA populations, in most cases it is unlikely that exposure to radioactive fallout was a substantial contributing cause of cancer.

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