ATTACHMENT B
Committee to Review Risk Assessment Approaches for the Medical Countermeasures Test and Evaluation Facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland
Members
CHARLES N. HAAS (Chair), Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
KAREN B. BYERS, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
NANCY D. CONNELL, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey
SARA Y. DEL VALLE, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico
JOSEPH N.S. EISENBERG, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
MARK T. HERNANDEZ, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado
JONATHAN Y. RICHMOND, Jonathan Richmond and Associates, Southport, North Carolina
LEONARD M. SIEGEL, Center for Public Environmental Oversight, Mountain View, California
Staff
SUSAN N.J. MARTEL, Project Director
FRANCES E. SHARPLES, Director, Board on Life Sciences
RUTH E. CROSSGROVE, Senior Editor
MIRSADA KARALIC-LONCAREVIC, Manager, Technical Information Center
TAMARA DAWSON, Program Associate
Sponsor
U.S. ARMY
Biographies of the Committee
Charles N. Haas is the L.D. Betz Chair Professor of Environmental Engineering and Head of the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at Drexel University. His broad research interests are in drinking-water treatment, bioterrorism, and risk assessment. Specific research activities include assessment of risks from exposures to deliberately released agents; engineering analysis and optimization of chemical decontamination schemes; microbiologic risks associated with pathogens in drinking water, biosolids, and foods; novel kinetic models for disinfection processes and process control; and use of computational fluid dynamics for process modeling. Dr. Haas is co-director of the Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment that is jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He received his M.S. from the Illinois Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Illinois. He was chair of the NRC Committee to Review the Health and Safety Risks of High-Biocontainment Laboratories at Fort Detrick.
Karen B. Byers is the biosafety officer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute where she oversees the research practices and training for Biosafety Levels 1-3 and Animal Biosafety Levels 1-3 laboratories. She is currently the president of the American Biological Safety Association and was the recipient of the association’s Everett Hanel Jr. Presidential Award in 2001 for promoting the field of biologic safety and fostering the high professional standards of the association’s membership. Ms. Byers received an M.S. in microbiology from the University of Maine in Orono. She is a registered biosafety professional and a certified biosafety professional.
Nancy D. Connell is professor and vice-chair for research in the Department of Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), New Jersey Medical School. Her major research focus is the interaction between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the macrophage. She directs the UMDNJ Center for Biodefense, which does research in drug discovery for select agents and in development of biodefense preparedness training programs. She chairs the Recombinant DNA Subcommittee of the Institutional Biosafety Committee and directs the Biosafety Level 3 Facility of the UMDNJ Center for the Study of Emerging and Re-emerging Pathogens. She received her Ph.D. in microbiology from Harvard University. Dr. Connell was a member of the NRC Committee to Review the Health and Safety Risks of High-Biocontainment Laboratories at Fort Detrick, and currently serves on the Committee on Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Bacillus Anthracis Mailings and the Committee on Trends in Science and Technology Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention: An International Workshop.
Sara Y. Del Valle is a scientist and project leader in the Decision Applications Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She also holds an appointment as an adjunct research professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Arizona State University. Her research interests are in developing and analyzing mathematical models for the spread of infectious diseases, including smallpox, HIV, and influenza, on a pandemic scale. She has also worked on modeling, simulating, and analyzing large-scale, agent-based discrete event simulations, including the Epidemic Simulation System, Multi-scale Integrated Information and Telecommunications System, and the Healthcare Simulation System. Dr. Del Valle received her Ph.D. in applied mathematics and computational sciences at the University of Iowa.
Joseph N.S. Eisenberg is associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. His research interests are in infectious disease epidemiology and developing disease transmission models. Recent work focused on the development of a new microbial risk-assessment framework that shifts the traditional approach of individual-based static models to population-based dynamic models. His work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has involved applying these
transmission models to assess the public-health risks from exposure to microbial agents in drinking waters, recreational waters, and biosolids. Dr. Eisenberg received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco.
Mark T. Hernandez is professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is an active consultant to the indoor air quality sector. He is also faculty director and principal investigator at the Colorado Diversity Initiative. A generation of his research lies on the cusp between biologic air pollution, wastewater treatment systems, and molecular biology. Recent work focused on tracking and characterizing bioaerosols generated by large-scale disasters, including major metropolitan floods, the quarantined City of New Orleans following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and coastal Louisiana affected by the Horizon oil spill. Dr. Hernandez serves as editor of the journal Aerosol Science and Technology. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and is a registered professional civil engineer. Dr. Hernandez was a member of the NRC Committee to Review the Health and Safety Risks of High-Biocontainment Laboratories at Fort Detrick and currently serves on the Committee on the Evaluation of a Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the Department of Homeland Security’s Planned National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas.
Jonathan Y. Richmond is CEO of Jonathan Richmond and Associates, a biosafety consulting firm with a global clientele. Prior to starting his own firm, Dr. Richmond was the director of the Office of Health and Safety at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. He is an international authority on biosafety and laboratory containment design. Dr. Richmond was trained as a geneticist, worked for 10 years as a research virologist, and has been involved in the field of biosafety for the past 32 years. He is the author of many scientific publications in microbiology; he has chaired many national symposia, edited numerous books, and is an international consultant to ministries of health on laboratory safety and training. He served as president of the American Biological Safety Association. Dr. Richmond received his M.S. in genetics from the University of Connecticut and his Ph.D. in genetics from Hahnemann University. He was a member of the NRC Committee to Review the Health and Safety Risks of High-Biocontainment Laboratories at Fort Detrick, and currently serves on the Committee on Continuing Assistance to the National Institutes of Health on Preparation of Additional Risk Assessments for the Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories.
Leonard M. Siegel is director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight (CPEO), a project of the Pacific Studies Center that facilitates public participation in the oversight of military environmental programs, federal facilities cleanup, and brownfield site revitalization. He is one of the environmental movement's leading experts on military facility contamination, community oversight of cleanup, and the vapor intrusion pathway. For his organization he runs two Internet newsgroups: the Military Environmental Forum and the Brownfields Internet Forum. Mr. Siegel also serves on numerous advisory committees, including California's Brownfields Revitalization Advisory Group, the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council’s Permeable Reactive Barrier Work Team, the Department of Toxic Substances Control (California) External Advisory Group, and the Moffett Field (former Moffett Naval Air Station) Restoration Advisory Board. He has also served on several committees of the NRC, including the Committee to Review the Health and Safety Risks of High-Biocontainment Laboratories at Fort Detrick.
