National Academies Press: OpenBook

Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease (2001)

Chapter: Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members

« Previous: References
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×

Page 127

A

Biographical Sketches of Committee Members

Donald Burke (Chair) is a professor in the Department of International Health and director of the Center for Immunization Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. Previously he served as chief of the Department of Virus Diseases and as director of the Division of Retrovirology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Medical Research. He also served as director of the U.S. Military HIV/AIDS Research Program and as chief of the Department of Virology for the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Bangkok, Thailand. His past research focused on tropical viral diseases such as dengue and encephalitis; and his current major interests are molecular epidemiology and the evolution of human viruses. He served on the National Research Council's Roundtable for the Development of Drugs and Vaccines Against AIDS and is past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine.

Ann Carmichael has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Duke University and is currently an associate professor in the Department of History at Indiana University. She teaches classes in the history of epidemics and human infections and has published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics. She has served on the editorial boards of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, the American Historical Review, and the Cambridge World History of Human Disease.

Dana Focks is a senior research scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology. His early work involved biocontrol and the development of computer simulation models

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×

Page 128

to help control Ae. aegypti, the vector of dengue hemorrhagic fever, and vectors of Venezuelan equine encephalitis. Later work focused on the development of weather-driven epidemiological models of dengue transmission. These models are currently used in numerous countries around the world including the U.S. Department of Defense, the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization. Current efforts have largely been directed toward developing validated assessments of the potential consequences of climate change and El Niño Southern/Oscillation events for dengue and lyme disease.

Darrell Jay Grimes is director of the Institute of Marine Sciences and professor of coastal sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi. His research interests include microbiological quality of water resources and bacterial genetics in natural environments. Previously, he served as director of the University of New Hampshire's Institute of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering and its Sea Grant College Program and as a microbiologist for U.S. Department of Energy's Environmental Sciences Division. He has served on many different advisory bodies for federal agencies and universities, as well as the National Research Council's Ocean Studies Board.

John Harte is a professor in the Energy and Resources Group and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include climate-ecosystem feedback processes, theoretical ecology with an emphasis on elucidating patterns of sealing in the distribution and abundance of species, causes and consequences of declining biodiversity, biogeochemical processes and their disruption, and the role of ecological integrity in human society. Dr. Harte is an associate editor of the Annual Review of Energy and the Environment. He served on the National Research Council's Committee on Scientific Issues in the Endangered Species Act and previously served on four other NRC committees.

Subhash Lele is a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Alberta. Previously he was with the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, where he served as a director of the university's Program on Health Effects of Global Environmental Change. Dr. Lele holds a Ph.D. in statistics, and his research interests include spatial statistics and geographic information systems with applications in ecology, environmental sciences, and public health, as well as more theoretical work in the foundations of statistics. He recently helped develop models of vector-borne disease patterns and the impacts of climate change.

Pim Martens holds degrees in biological and environmental health sciences, and has a Ph.D. in mathematics from Maastricht University, Netherlands. He worked on the global dynamics and sustainable development project launched in

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×

Page 129

1992 by the Dutch National Institute of Public Health and the Environment. Since 1998 he has served as a senior researcher at the university's International Centre for Integrative Studies, where he directs the Global Assessment Centre. He is also editor in chief of the international journal Global Change and Human Health and editor of a book series on resurgent and emerging infectious diseases. Dr. Martens is project leader of various national and international projects on global change and human health; he has contributed assessment reports to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, and is a member on several scientific advisory committees.

Jonathan Mayer is a professor of geography; adjunct professor of medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases; adjunct professor of family medicine; and adjunct professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. He is a medical geographer whose specialty is infectious diseases and society, disease ecology, and health care delivery. He served as director of the university's Undergraduate Program in Public Health. He teaches classes on the geography of infectious diseases at local, national, and international scales; the environmental, cultural, and social explanations of those variations; and comparative aspects of health systems.

Linda Mearns is a scientist and deputy director of the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. She holds a Ph.D. in geography/climatology from the University of California at Los Angeles. Her research focuses on climate change impacts and variability on the biosphere, particularly agroecosystems, land surface/atmosphere interactions, and analysis of climate variability and extreme climate events in both observations and climate models. She was the lead author of several chapters in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working groups I and II on subtopics dealing with regional climate and similar types of climate scenarios.

Roger Pulwarty is a research scientist at the Climate Diagnostics Center in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is currently on leave, serving with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Office of Global Programs as the program manager for regional integrated assessments. He is interested in climate and its role in society/environment interactions, including the assessment and management of climate-related risks. His research has focused on factors influencing societal and environmental vulnerability to climate variations and abrupt changes and the practical utilization of climate/weather information in the western United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. He serves on the Applied Climatology and the Societal Impacts Committees of the American Meteorological Society and is on the editorial board of the journal Climate Research.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×

Page 130

Leslie Real is Asa G. Candler Professor of Biology at Emory University. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His research interests include theoretical and evolutionary biology, population ecology and genetics, and the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases. Dr. Real has served on the National Research Council's Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and is currently a member of the NRC's Committee on Hormonally Active Agents in the Environment. Dr. Real also serves on the Science Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Chester Ropelewski is director of climate monitoring and dissemination for the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction at Columbia University. Previously, he served as a research meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center of the National Weather Service, directing research and operational climate monitoring from 1990 to 1997. His primary research interests include studies of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and its influence on rainfall and temperature, analysis and display of climate information, influence of land surface on atmospheric processes, and detection of global climate change. He has been a contributor to national and international reports, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and currently chairs the American Meteorological Society's Climate Variations Committee.

Joan Rose is a professor in the Department of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Water Science and Technology Board and has served on other NRC committees dealing with water supply systems. Her area of expertise is water pollution microbiology, and her research focuses on surveys of waste waters, source waters, and drinking waters for waterborne disease-causing agents, specifically viruses and protozoa, and new technologies for the recovery, detection, and identification of pathogens in water. She was recently invited to join the National Drinking Water Advisory Council.

Robert Shope is professor of pathology at the Center for Tropical Diseases, University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston. He is a virologist/epidemiologist and former director of the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit. He was a member of teams that investigated outbreaks of Rift Valley fever, dengue, St. Louis encephalitis, Lyme disease, and other vectorborne diseases that are climate sensitive. He also has expertise in the diagnosis and rapid identification of human pathogenic viruses carried by arthropods and rodents. In 1992 he co-chaired the Institute of Medicine's study on emerging infections and has served on several National Research Council committees.

Joanne Simpson is chief scientist for meteorology at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center. Previously she was

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×

Page 131

head of the Severe Storms Branch at Goddard, principal investigator for NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission. She has held professorships at several universities. Her expertise spans the fields of tropical meteorology, remote sensing, atmospheric physics and engineering, Earth system science, and oceanography. She currently serves on the National Research Council's Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate and previously was on the NRC's Advisory Panel for the Tropical Ocean/Global Atmosphere Program. In addition, she is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, has served as president of the American Meteorological Society, and has served as a member of numerous advisory panels for American Meteorological Society, National Science Foundation, NASA, and other organizations.

Mark Wilson holds a dual appointment as associate professor in the Departments of Biology and Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. After earning his Sc.D. from the Harvard School of Public Health, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard; worked at the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal; and from 1991 to 1996 was a member of the faculty at Yale University. Dr. Wilson's research addresses patterns and processes in disease ecology, particularly of human pathogens that are arthropod-borne or zoonotic. His studies of transmission dynamics, vector-host-parasite evolution, and environmental variation are directed at various viral, bacterial, and protozoal diseases and employ field studies, laboratory experiments, and modeling, including use of satellite images and geographical information systems. The goals are to reduce the risk of emerging diseases, to design ecologically sound development, and to understand the health impacts of global environmental change.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×
Page 127
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×
Page 128
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×
Page 129
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×
Page 130
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2001. Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10025.
×
Page 131
Next: Appendix B: Speakers/Presentations at the Committee eetings »
Under the Weather: Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease Get This Book
×
Buy Hardback | $45.00 Buy Ebook | $35.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

Since the dawn of medical science, people have recognized connections between a change in the weather and the appearance of epidemic disease. With today's technology, some hope that it will be possible to build models for predicting the emergence and spread of many infectious diseases based on climate and weather forecasts. However, separating the effects of climate from other effects presents a tremendous scientific challenge.

Can we use climate and weather forecasts to predict infectious disease outbreaks? Can the field of public health advance from "surveillance and response" to "prediction and prevention?" And perhaps the most important question of all: Can we predict how global warming will affect the emergence and transmission of infectious disease agents around the world?

Under the Weather evaluates our current understanding of the linkages among climate, ecosystems, and infectious disease; it then goes a step further and outlines the research needed to improve our understanding of these linkages. The book also examines the potential for using climate forecasts and ecological observations to help predict infectious disease outbreaks, identifies the necessary components for an epidemic early warning system, and reviews lessons learned from the use of climate forecasts in other realms of human activity.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!