Appendix D
Committee and Staff Biographies
Committee Biographies
Kenneth D. Ramos, MD, PhD (Chair), is the Associate Vice President for Precision Health Sciences and a professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at the Arizona Health Sciences Center. Dr. Ramos also serves as the Director of the Center for Applied Genetics and Genomic Medicine and Director of the College of Medicine MD-PhD Program. He is responsible for developing precision-health strategies and approaches to health outcomes and health care delivery and provides senior leadership in the development of personal diagnostics and therapeutics for complex diseases, including cancers, cardiopulmonary disorders, and diabetes. Dr. Ramos’ research program integrates diverse approaches ranging from molecular genetics to population-based public health studies in efforts to understand the genomic bases of human disease and to advance the goals of personalized genomic medicine. He is regarded as a leading expert in the study of gene–environment interactions and personalized medicine and directs a competitive and innovative research program in translational and clinical genetics and genomics at the University of Arizona. Dr. Ramos completed a BS in pharmaceutical sciences and chemistry (magna cum laude) at the University of Puerto Rico, a PhD in biochemical pharmacology at the University of Texas at Austin, and an MD with postgraduate training in internal medicine at the University of Louisville Health Sciences Center. He has held faculty positions at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Texas A&M University, the University of Louisville School of Medicine, and the University of Arizona. He is currently
affiliated with the Arizona Cancer Center and the Arizona Respiratory Center. Dr. Ramos is former President of the Society of Toxicology (2008–2009) and has served on numerous National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committees, including the committees responsible for the Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 1996 and Update 1998 reports, the Committee on Application of Toxicogenomics Technologies to Predictive Toxicology, the Committee on Emerging Issues and Data on Environmental Contaminants, and the Committee on Application of Genomic Signatures: A Workshop. He is currently serving on the Roundtable on Public Interfaces of Life Sciences and was co-chair of the Committee on Sustainable Infrastructures for Public Communication of the Life Sciences: A Workshop.
Ilir Agalliu, MD, ScD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health and the Department of Urology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His main research interests are directed toward understanding the contribution of genetic and lifestyle/environmental risk factors in the etiology and progression of cancers. Dr. Agalliu received his training at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, University of Manchester, and the University of Tirana, Medical School. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He is a member of multiple organizations, including the American Public Health Association and the Society for Epidemiologic Research.
Erin M. Bell, PhD, is associate professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health of the University at Albany. She received her undergraduate degree in biology with honors from Hartwick College and her MS and PhD degrees in epidemiology from, respectively, the University of Massachusetts–Amherst and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Between her master’s and doctoral studies, she was a Research Associate for the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) Medical Follow-up Agency. Her epidemiology research focuses on environmental exposures, particularly to pesticides, as they are related to reproductive, immune, and cancer outcomes. She previously served on the IOM Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides: Seventh and Eighth Biennial Updates.
Maarten C. Bosland, PhD, DVSc, is a professor of pathology at the University of Illinois, College of Medicine, at Chicago. He earned his DVSc (1978) and PhD (1989) from the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands. Dr. Bosland’s research interests include hormonal carcinogenesis, particularly prostate carcinogenesis, and clinical and preclinical cancer chemoprevention, particularly prostate cancer prevention. He has served on four panels of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer because of his expertise in the mechanisms of hormonal carcinogenesis.
Robert Canales, PhD, MS, is an assistant professor in the Community, Environment and Policy Division at the Mel & Enid Zuckerman School of Public Health at the University of Arizona. He received his MS in statistics and PhD in environmental engineering and science from Stanford University and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Canales applies principles in the natural sciences and mathematics to explore environmental health issues, particularly human exposure to environmental contaminants. With a background in environmental engineering, public health, and statistics, his research focuses on creating models/simulations and exploring data to improve human health, and has included a variety of projects, including modeling the fate and transport of contaminants in indoor environments, simulating children’s behavior and contaminant intake levels, and distinguishing demographic variables for identifying households with high indoor pesticide concentrations. Dr. Canales recently served on the IOM’s Committee to Evaluate the Potential Exposure of Agent Orange/TCDD Residue and Level of Risk of Adverse Health Effects for Aircrew of Post-Vietnam C-123 Aircraft.
Michael J. Carvan III, PhD, MS, is a Shaw Professor at the School of Freshwater Sciences and School of Public Health, both of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He earned his MS in biologic oceanography at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Coral Gables and his PhD in veterinary anatomy and public health with a focus in toxicology from Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in College Station. After obtaining his doctorate, Dr. Carvan held National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences molecular toxicology fellowships at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. His research uses zebrafish as a genetic system for identifying genes that influence susceptibility of response to xenobiotics. He has served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Board on Life Sciences and, most recently, on the IOM Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides: Ninth Biennial Update.
Melissa Gonzales, PhD, is an associate professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Medicine. She received her doctorate in environmental health from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, and her master’s in toxicology/industrial hygiene from the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy. Dr. Gonzales’s research focuses on characterizing complex environmental exposures for population and laboratory health effects studies, and the translation and communication of scientific findings to affected communities, regulatory agencies and health care providers. Currently, Dr. Gonzales co-directs the Center for Native American Environmental Health Equity, an academic-tribal partnership; and is a founding member of the UNM Metal Exposure Toxicity Assessment on Tribal Lands in the Southwest (METALS) Team investigating transdisciplinary approaches to understanding the
unique exposure and response mechanisms in tribal communities that contribute to health disparities. Her work includes the Albuquerque Hispanic Moms Study, the Zuni Exposure Study, the Colorectal Disease Prevention Study, occupational exposure and DNA repair in melanoma, and the Environmental Protection Agency El Paso Children’s Health Study and the ARCH study of asthma and air pollution among children living on the US/Mexico border. She previously served on the IOM Committee to Evaluate the Potential Exposure of Agent Orange/TCDD Residue and Level of Risk of Adverse Health Effects for Aircrew of Post-Vietnam C-123 Aircraft.
Karl T. Kelsey, MD, MOH, is a professor of epidemiology and pathology and laboratory medicine at Brown University. He received his MD from the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in occupational health from Harvard University. Until 2007 he was on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. He is interested in the application of laboratory-based biomarkers in chronic-disease epidemiology and tumor biology and in characterizing individual susceptibility to cancers. He is an author of more than 200 publications and has served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Toxicity Testing and Assessment of Environmental Agents, Committee on Copper in Drinking Water, Committee on the Evaluation of the Department of Veterans Affairs Uniform Case Assessment Protocol, Committee to Review the Health Consequences of Service During the Persian Gulf War, Committee to Conduct a Study on Curriculum Development in Environmental Medicine, Committee on the Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite, and, most recently, on the Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides: Eighth and Ninth Biennial Updates.
Kevin E. Kip, PhD, FAHA, is a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in the College of Nursing, and Executive Director of the Research Center in the College of Nursing at the University of South Florida. Dr. Kip has substantial experience in directing observational epidemiological studies and clinical trials principally in the areas of cardiovascular diseases and psychotherapy. He also has research interests in complementary and alternative medicine, gastroenterology, epidemiological methods, and veterans’ health. He received his MS degree from the University of Central Florida, his MSPH from the University of Alabama, and his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh.
Stephen Kritchevsky, PhD, is a professor of internal medicine and translational science and the director of the Sticht Center on Aging of Wake Forest School of Medicine. After receiving both his MSPH and PhD in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he joined the Departments of Biostatistics and of Epidemiology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, where he founded that school’s Masters of Clinical Epidemiology
Program. Dr. Kritchevsky’s research interests are related to conditions that compromise the health of aging populations, particularly inflammation, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. He has published more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. Most recently, he served on the IOM Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides: Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Biennial Updates.
Elan D. Louis, MD, MSc, is a professor of Neurology and Epidemiology and Chief of the Division of Movement Disorders at Yale University. His principal academic interest is in degenerative diseases of the central nervous system, focusing on disorders of involuntary movement, including their epidemiology, distribution within populations, genetic basis, etiology, and pathogenesis. He has a particular interest in essential tremor (ET), one of the most common neurological disorders, and his research efforts have focused on the familial aggregation of ET; the environmental epidemiology of ET; the role of lead, beta-carboline alkaloids and other neurotoxins in ET, the relationships between ET and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases; and the pathological basis of ET. Dr. Louis currently leads the Essential Tremor Centralized Brain Repository at Columbia University, which is a national centralized brain bank for the study of ET, and he has established a large DNA bank for patients with the disorder. He collaborates with investigators in Mexico, Spain, and Turkey examining the epidemiology of ET in these populations, and he has received continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1995, as well as funding from the International Essential Tremor Foundation, the Charles A. Dana Foundation, the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, and a Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholars Award from the American Federation for Aging Research. Since 2008 he has been the Principal Investigator of the Neuroepidemiology Training Program, which is a postdoctoral training program at Columbia University funded by NIH through a T32 mechanism. The program provides training in a research environment for developing neurologists/neuroscientists who wish to use epidemiologic methods to study diseases of the nervous system and have as a career goal, a research or academic position. Dr. Louis is the author of more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and has been invited to write editorials and reviews for Annals of Neurology, Movement Disorders, Archives of Neurology, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and Lancet Neurology.
David Richardson, PhD, MSPH, is an associate professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on the health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation. He has conducted studies of cancers among nuclear workers at several US Department of Energy facilities as well as studied cancers among the Japanese survivors
of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He has served as a visiting scientist at the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, and at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima, Japan. He is an associate editor of the journals Occupational and Environmental Medicine and Environmental Health Perspectives, and he is a member of the President’s Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health.
Mitchell Turker, PhD, JD, is a Senior Scientist at the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences and a Professor of Molecular and Medical Genetics at Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Turker received his PhD in pathology from the University of Washington (UW) and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He served as a Research Instructor in the Department of Pathology at UW. He went on to the University of Kentucky, where he served as an assistant professor and associate professor in the Departments of Pathology and Microbiology/Immunology and as the Director of Experimental Pathology. Prior to joining the Center for Research on Occupational and Environmental Toxicology, he was a visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics and Development at Columbia University. Dr. Turker received a JD from Lewis and Clark Law School in May 2008 with a certificate in environmental law. He was a Jefferson Science Fellow at the US Department of State from 2010 to 2011.
Lori White, PhD, MS, is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology of the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She received a master’s degree in zoology from the University of Maine, earned a PhD in biochemistry from Dartmouth Medical School, and did post-doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin. She has been active in Gordon Conference programs and was the chairperson for the Mechanisms of Toxicology summer session in 2008. Her research interests include the elucidation of dioxin’s carcinogenic activity and the use of the zebrafish as a model for investigating the effects of environmental chemicals on development. She recently served on the IOM Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides: Ninth Biennial Update.
STAFF BIOGRAPHIES
Mary Burr Paxton, PhD, is a Senior Program Officer in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Board on the Health of Select Populations. Before joining the Academies, she worked as a consultant on the regulation of toxic substances and managed the conduct and analysis of several epidemiologic studies on veterans’ health. She received an MS in biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and a doctorate in genetics
from the George Washington University. She was a diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology (1993–2013). Dr. Paxton has worked on several Academies reports, including issues in Risk Assessment; Environmental Neurotoxicology; Gulf War and Health: insecticides and Solvents; Gulf War and Health: Fuels, Combustion Products, and Propellants; Asbestos: Selected Cancers; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2004; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2006; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2008; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2010; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2012; and Post-Vietnam Dioxin Exposure in Agent Orange–Contaminated C-123 Aircraft.
Jennifer A. Cohen, MPH, is a Program Officer in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Board on the Health of Select Populations. She received her undergraduate degree and her MPH from the University of Maryland. She has been involved with the Academies committees that produced Organ Procurement and Transplantation; Clearing the Air: Asthma and indoor Air Exposures; Veterans and Agent Orange: Herbicide/Dioxin Exposure and Type 2 Diabetes; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2000; Veterans and Agent Orange: Herbicide/Dioxin Exposure and Acute Myelogenous Leukemia in the Children of Vietnam Veterans; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2004; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2006; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2008; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2010; Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2012; and Post-Vietnam Dioxin Exposure in Agent Orange–Contaminated C-123 Aircraft. She was also rapporteur for the Institute of Medicine report Challenges and Successes in Reducing Health Disparities.
Heather L. Chiarello, MA, joined the staff of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in July 2008. She graduated magna cum laude from Central Michigan University in 2007 with a BS in political science accompanied by a concentration in public administration and a minor in legal studies. She obtained a master’s degree in sociology with a focus on military sociology in 2014 from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Ms. Chiarello has worked on numerous studies throughout the Academies and is currently a research associate focusing on military and veteran studies with the Board on the Health of Select Populations at the Academies.
Nicole Freid is a Senior Program Assistant at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Board on the Health of Select Populations. She is working on several studies at the Academies addressing occupational and environmental exposures among the veteran population. She earned her bachelor’s degree in economics and political science at American University in Washington, DC. Before joining the Academies, she worked at Avalere Health; a health care consulting firm, where she incorporated health policy analysis in final deliverables for pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers.
