Appendix B
Committee Biographies
Harvey V. Fineberg, MD, PhD (Committee Chair) is Visiting Professor and Presidential Chair at the University of California, San Francisco, and he served two consecutive terms as President of the Institute of Medicine (2002-2014). He served as Provost of Harvard University from 1997 to 2001, following 13 years as Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. He has devoted most of his academic career to the fields of health policy and medical decision-making. His past research has focused on the process of policy development and implementation, assessment of medical technology, evaluation and use of vaccines, and dissemination of medical innovations. Dr. Fineberg helped found and served as President of the Society for Medical Decision Making and has been a consultant to the World Health Organization. At the Institute of Medicine, he chaired and served on a number of panels dealing with health policy issues, ranging from AIDS to new medical technology. He also served as a member of the Public Health Council of Massachusetts (1976-1979), as Chairman of the Health Care Technology Study Section of the National Center for Health Services Research (1982-1985), and as President of the Association of Schools of Public Health (1995-1996). Dr. Fineberg is co-author of the books Clinical Decision Analysis, Innovators in Physician Education, and The Epidemic That Never Was, an analysis of the controversial federal immunization program against swine flu in 1976. He has co-edited several books on such diverse topics as AIDS prevention, vaccine safety, and understanding risk in society. He has also authored numerous articles published in professional journals. Dr. Fineberg is the recipient of several honorary
degrees and the Stephen Smith Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Public Health from the New York Academy of Medicine. He earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University.
Ronald M. Atlas, PhD is Professor of Biology at the University of Louisville. After receiving his master’s and PhD degrees from Rutgers University, he became a postdoctoral fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on Mars life detection. He has served as Chair of NASA’s Planetary Protection Subcommittee, Co-Chair of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Task Force on Biodefense, and a member of the FBI Scientific Working Group on Microbial Genetics and Forensics. He also served as President of ASM and was a member of the NIH Recombinant Advisory Committee. He currently chairs the Public and Scientific Affairs Board of the ASM. His research has included development of detection methods for pathogens in the environment. Dr. Atlas is the author of nearly 300 manuscripts and 20 books, and he regularly advises the U.S. government on policy issues related to the deterrence of bioterrorism.
Ralph Baric, PhD 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 alphavirus 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 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 of 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, persistence, 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 institutional recombinant-DNA review committees. He has published more than 130 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including several in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and Nature Medicine, 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, pathogenesis, vaccine design, and cross-species transmission of viruses, often using the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus or noroviruses as models.
Ruth L. Berkelman, MD is the Rollins Chair and Director of the Center for Public Health Preparedness and Research, at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. She holds appointments in the departments of Epidemiology, Global Health, and Medicine, and serves as a senior associate faculty member in Emory’s Center for Ethics. She previously served as an Assistant Surgeon General in the U.S. Public Health Service at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2004, she has served on various committees, the IOM’s Forum on Emerging Infectious Diseases and the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Board on Life Sciences. She has been a member of the National Biodefense Science Board and the Board of Trustees at Princeton University. She was previously Chair of the Public and Scientific Affairs Board of the American Society of Microbiology. She currently chairs the Board of Scientific Counselors for infectious diseases at CDC.
Donald S. Burke, MD is the Dean of the Graduate School of Public Health, Director of the Center for Vaccine Research, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Global Health at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also the first occupant of the UPMC-Jonas Salk Chair in Global Health and a Distinguished University Professor of Health Science and Policy. He was an intern and resident in medicine at Boston City and Massachusetts General Hospitals and trained as a research fellow in infectious diseases at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Dr. Burke has expertise in the prevention and control of infectious diseases of global concern, including HIV/AIDS, influenza, dengue, and emerging infectious diseases. He is an IOM member and has served on previous NRC and IOM committees including the Committee on the Special Immunizations Program for Laboratory Personnel Engaged in Research on Countermeasures for Select Agents and the Committee on Assessment of Future Scientific Needs for Live Variola Virus. Dr. Burke received his BA from Western Reserve University and his MD from Harvard Medical School.
R. Alta Charo, JD is the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison, where she is on the faculty of the Law School and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the medical school. She has also served on the faculty of the UW Masters in Biotechnology Studies program and lectured in the MPH
program of the Department of Population Health Sciences. Alta Charo (BA biology, Harvard University, 1979; JD Columbia University, 1982) is an elected member of the World Technology Network (2004), the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (2005), and the IOM (2006). In 2013 she was awarded the Adam Yarmolinsky Medal for her service to the IOM, and she currently serves on the IOM Council. Professor Charo served on President Obama’s transition team, where she was a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) review team, focusing her attention particularly on transition issues related to NIH, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), bioethics, stem cell policy, and women’s reproductive health. She was on leave from 2009-2011 to serve as a senior policy advisor on emerging technology issues in the Office of the Commissioner at the FDA.
Philip Dormitzer, MD, PhD is Head of U.S. Research, Global Head of Virology, and Vice President at Novartis Vaccines in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a practicing physician, who is board certified in internal medicine. After studying anthropology at Harvard College and carrying out a field study of the Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest of Zaire, he completed his MD and PhD in cancer biology at Stanford University. Dr. Dormitzer completed house-staff training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship in the Harvard Combined Infectious Diseases Training Program. He conducted his fellowship research in the Laboratory of Molecular Medicine, led by Dr. Stephen Harrison. As an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Dormitzer led a structural virology laboratory. The Dormitzer group and its collaborators determined the structures of the rotavirus neutralization antigens by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, and near atomic resolution electron cryomicroscopy. At Novartis, as Senior Project Leader for Viral Vaccine Research, he led global vaccine research projects. In 2009, these projects included the research component of the Novartis response to the H1N1v influenza pandemic, supporting the development and licensure of three pandemic influenza vaccines in the most rapid vaccine response in history. As Head of the Viral Advanced Programs Global Team, he coordinated scientific and industrial functions to advance novel vaccine projects toward licensure, with a primary focus on an engineered RSV F subunit vaccine candidate, intended for maternal immunization. As Head of U.S. Vaccines Research, he now leads approximately 70 scientists based at the Novartis Vaccines Cambridge Research Center in their mission to discover new vaccines, support vaccine development, and sustain licensed vaccines. The team’s technology platforms include structurally engineered antigens, adjuvants that target toll-like receptors, and self-replicating messenger RNA vaccines. In a Biomedical Advanced Research
Development Authority (BARDA)-funded collaboration with the J. Craig Venter Institute and Synthetic Genomics Vaccines, Inc., the team developed a process to synthesize influenza vaccine seed viruses and deployed the technology in response to the H7N9 influenza outbreak in China.
Baruch Fischhoff, PhD is the Howard Heinz University Professor in the departments of Social and Decision Sciences and of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, where he heads the Decision Sciences major. A graduate of the Detroit Public Schools, he holds a BS in mathematics and psychology from Wayne State University and an MA and PhD in psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a member of the IOM and is past President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and of the Society for Risk Analysis, and recipient of its Distinguished Achievement Award. He was founding Chair of the FDA Risk Communication Advisory Committee, recently chaired the NRC Committee on Behavioral and Social Science Research to Improve Intelligence Analysis for National Security, and currently co-chairs the NRC Committee on Future Research Goals and Directions for Foundational Science in Cybersecurity and the National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquium on “The Science of Science Communication.” He is a former member of the Eugene, Oregon Commission on the Rights of Women, Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Advisory Committee, World Federation of Scientists Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism, and Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board, where he chaired the Homeland Security Advisory Committee. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science (previously the American Psychological Association), Society of Experimental Psychologists, and Society for Risk Analysis. He has co-authored or edited 11 books: Acceptable Risk (1981); A Two-State Solution in the Middle East: Prospects and Possibilities (1993); Elicitation of Preferences (2000); Risk Communication: A Mental Models Approach (2002); Intelligence Analysis: Behavioral and Social Science Foundations (2011); Risk: A Very Short Introduction (2011); Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based Guide (2011); Judgment and Decision Making (2011); Risk Analysis and Human Behavior (2011); The Science of Science Communication (2013); and Counting Civilian Casualties (2013).
Charles N. Haas, PhD is the L.D. Betz Professor of Environmental Engineering and head of the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at Drexel University, where he has been since 1991. He also has courtesy appointments in the Department of Emergency Medicine of the Drexel University College of Medicine and in the School of Public Health. He received his BS (biology) and MS (environmental
engineering) from the Illinois Institute of Technology and his PhD in environmental engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He served on the faculties of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Illinois Institute of Technology prior to joining Drexel. He co-directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)/Department of Homeland Security (DHS) University Cooperative Center of Excellence—Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment (CAMRA). He is a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, Society for Risk Analysis, American Society of Civil Engineers, and American Academy of Microbiology. He is a board-certified environmental engineering member by eminence of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers. For more than 35 years, Professor Haas has specialized in the assessment of risk from and control of human exposure to pathogenic microorganisms, and in particular the treatment of water and wastewater to minimize microbial risk to human health. Professor Haas has served on numerous NRC panels. He is a past member of the Water Science and Technology Board of the National Academies, and the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors.
Stephen C. Harrison, PhD is Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Professor of Basic Medical Sciences, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He obtained his BA from Harvard University in 1963 and his PhD in biophysics from Harvard University in 1968. He has served on the Harvard University faculty since 1971. Between 1972 and 1996, he was Chair of the Board of Tutors in Biochemical Sciences, Harvard’s undergraduate program in biochemistry. He was Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Faculty of Arts and Sciences) from 1988 to 1992 and Acting Chair of the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology (Harvard Medical School) from 2009 to 2012. He is also head of the Laboratory of Molecular Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital. For many years, his research laboratory was linked closely with that of the late Don C. Wiley. Dr. Harrison has made important contributions to structural biology, most notably by determining and analyzing the structures of viruses and viral proteins, by crystallographic analysis of protein/DNA complexes, and by structural studies of protein-kinase switching mechanisms. The initiator of high-resolution virus crystallography, he has moved from his early work on tomato bushy stunt virus (1978) to the study of more complex human pathogens, including the capsid of human papillomavirus, the envelope of dengue virus, rotavirus particles, and several components of HIV. He has also turned some of his research attention to even more complex subcellular assemblies, such as clathrin coated vesicles and kinetochores. Dr. Harrison is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a foreign member of EMBO and the Royal Society. He received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (with Don Wiley and Michael Rossmann) in 1990, the ICN International Prize in Virology in 1998, and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize (with Michael Rossmann) in 2001.
Sir John Skehel, PhD is a graduate of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth (1962) and gained his PhD from the University of Manchester in 1966. He did research at the University of Aberdeen (1965-1968) and was a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation fellow at Duke University and at the Medical Research Council (MRC) National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) Mill Hill (1968-1971). He was MRC staff scientist at NIMR from 1971 to 2006, Director of the WHO World Influenza Centre from 1975 to 1993, Head of Infections and Immunity from 1985 to 2006, and Director of the NIMR from 1987 to 2006. He is a visiting scientist in the Division of Virology at NIMR. His research is on the influenza virus haemagglutinin and neuraminidase membrane glycoproteins and the mechanisms of their receptor binding, membrane fusion, and enzymic activities. He is a member of the Council of Aberystwyth University and a Trustee of the Animal Health Trust. He was elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 1983, fellow of the Royal Society in 1984, member of the Academia Europaea in 1992, fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1998 (Vice President from 2001 to 2006) and a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014. He was knighted in 1996. He was Honorary Professor of Virology at Glasgow University, Liverpool John Moores University, and University College London and was awarded an honorary DSc from The Council for National Academic Awards in 1990, University College London in 2004, Liverpool John Moores University in 2007, and University of Padua (medicine and surgery) in 2010. He is a fellow of the University of Wales and an honorary member of the Society for General Microbiology.
Robert G. Webster, PhD is Professor and Rose Marie Thomas Chair, Division of Virology, in the Department of Infectious Diseases at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Dr. Webster received his PhD in microbiology from the Australian National University and his MSc and BSc at Otago University in New Zealand. Dr. Webster is a virologist who has defined the nature and origins of human pandemic influenza strains—the viruses that cause the flu. His work on the molecular and genetic basis of antigenic shift and of antigenic drift has been of enormous significance in shaping strategies for preventing future human flu pandemics. He has been involved recently in elucidating the origin of the avian H5N1 influenza viruses that transmitted directly to humans in Hong Kong and killed 6 of the 18 humans infected.
