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Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health (2007)

Chapter: Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
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Appendixes

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
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Appendix A
Committee and Staff Biographies

H. Catherine W. Skinner (Chair) holds teaching and research positions in the Departments of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, and Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, Yale Medical School. She previously held positions at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, the National Institute of Dental Research, and the Department of Biology, Yale University. Dr. Skinner is a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Mineralogical Society of America and has served as president of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a trustee of the Geological Society of America Foundation. Her research areas include minerals, particularly minerals found in life forms, microbes, invertebrates and vertebrates, and the processes of biomineralization. Dr. Skinner is an author of the major reference text Dana’s New Mineralogy, three other books, and over 70 research papers. She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, her M.A. from Radcliffe, and her Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide, South Australia.


Herbert E. Allen is a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Delaware. Before joining the faculty of the University of Delaware in 1989, he was director of the Environmental Studies Institute and professor of chemistry at Drexel University; previously he was on the faculty of the Department of Environmental Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Dr. Allen received his Ph.D. and B.S. from the University of Michigan and his M.S. from Wayne State University. Dr. Allen’s research has primarily been concerned with the fate and effects of trace

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×

metals in aquatic and soil environments. He has authored more than 170 journal papers, book chapters, and major reports and has edited seven books and prepared numerous reports and proceedings papers. He has been the principal or co-principal investigator for over 70 research projects funded by government and industry. His principal areas of research are the fate of metals in aquatic and terrestrial environments and the development of site-specific criteria. He headed a multiuniversity consortium of universities, supported by the Environmental Protection Agency from 1994 until 2000 that conducted research on the fate and effects of metals and organics in natural water systems, and now heads the newly formed multiuniversity EPA Center for the Study of Metals in the Environment. Dr. Allen was a member of the organizing committee for the 1993 EPA Annapolis workshop and a member of the 1996 SETAC Pellston conference to review water quality criteria for metals. He served as chairman of the Organizing Committee for the Workshop on Metal Speciation that was held in Jekyll Island, Georgia, every two years from 1987 through 1995. He has also served as a consultant to a number of industrial companies, government agencies, and the World Health Organization.


Jean M. Bahr is a professor of hydrogeology in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has been a faculty member since 1987. She is a former chair of the Water Resources Management Program at UW and a member of the Geological Engineering Program faculty. Her research interests include both naturally occurring and anthropogenic sources of groundwater contamination and the coupled physical and biogeochemical processes responsible for subsurface contaminant transport. She is currently serving a three-year term on the Council of the Geological Society of America and in 2003 was the Geological Society of America’s Hydrogeology Division Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer. She earned a B.A. in geology from Yale University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in applied earth sciences (hydrogeology) from Stanford University.


Philip C. Bennett is a professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Texas, Austin. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in aqueous geochemistry and hydrology and graduate courses in geomicrobiology, organic geochemistry, and geochemical kinetics. His research is primarily in the area of microbial and environmental geochemistry, mineral weathering kinetics, and geomicrobiology, with a focus on the influence of geochemistry and geology on subsurface microbial ecology. Dr. Bennett has a B.S. from Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA), a M.S. from SUNY Syracuse, and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×

Kenneth P. Cantor is a senior investigator in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute, where he has directed studies of cancer and environmental factors since 1977. His research interests focus on the epidemiological investigation of cancer risks associated with occupational and environmental factors and their interaction with other exposures and host factors. His particular area of investigation deals with water contaminants (nitrate, arsenic, disinfection byproducts), pesticides, electromagnetic radiation, and the role of genetic factors in susceptibility to these and other factors. Dr. Cantor received his B.A. from Oberlin College, a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health.


José A. Centeno is asenior research scientist and chief of the Division of Biophysical Toxicology, Department of Environmental and Infectious Disease Sciences, U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C. He is also director of the International Tissue and Tumor Repository on Chronic Arseniasis, the Registry on Uranium and Depleted Uranium, and the International Registry on Medical Geology. He holds adjunct faculty professorships at major universities and medical institutions, including the George Washington University School of Public Health, Turabo University(Puerto Rico), Jackson State University, and Hope University Medical School. Since 2005 he has served as an officer for the International Union of Geological Sciences and its Commission on Geoscience for Environmental Management. He serves as a founding member and cochairman of the International Medical Geology Association.His research focuses on environmental toxicology, environmental pathology, medical geology, and health effects of trace elements, toxic trace metals, and metalloids, and he has conducted research and taught training activities on medical geology in over 30 countries. Dr. Centeno received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Puerto Rico and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University.


Lois K. Cohen recently retired as the associate director for international health at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, where she directed both the Office of International Health and the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Dental and Craniofacial Research. She is now a consultant to the NIDCR. Dr. Cohen is a sociologist, specializing in oral health and international collaborative research. She has published numerous research papers and edited four books in the socio-dental sciences, health systems research, and health promotion, and serves on the advisory boards for the PAHO/WHO programs for oral health, the Middle East Center for Dental Education, and the Canadian Institute for Health Research’s Institute for Musculoskeletal Health

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×

and Arthritis. She also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Dental Association and the African Journal of Oral Health and is a peer reviewer for other journals in the social science, medicine, and public health fields. Awarded an honorary doctorate from Purdue University, she has also been named a senior distinguished scientist by the International Association for Dental Research and the D.C. Sociological Society and has been awarded an honorary fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American and International Colleges of Dentistry, the American Dental Association, and the Academy of Dentistry Internationale. The founding president of Behavioral Scientists in Dental Research, she has served as an officer for several public health, dental research, and social science associations. She has held academic appointments in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Howard University and in the Department of Social Medicine and Health Policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cohen has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Purdue University.


Paul R. Epstein is associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School and is a medical doctor trained in tropical public health. Dr. Epstein has worked in medical, teaching, and research capacities in Africa, Asia and Latin America and in 1993 coordinated an eight-part series on health and climate change for the British medical journal, Lancet. Dr. Epstein coedited the report Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological and Economic Dimensions, with support from Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme. He has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to assess the health impacts of climate change and develop health applications of climate forecasting and remote sensing.


W. Gary Ernst (NAS) is Benjamin M. Page Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. He was previously professor of geology and geophysics at University of California, Los Angeles, chairman of the Department of Geology (1970–1974), chairman of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences (1978–1982), and UCLA director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (1987–1989). In 1989 he moved to Stanford for a five-year term as dean of the School of Earth Sciences. Dr. Ernst’s research encompasses the physical chemistry of rocks and minerals; Phanerozoic interactions of lithospheric plates and mobile mountain belts, especially in central Asia, the Circumpacific, and the western Alps; early Precambrian

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×

petrotectonic evolution; ultrahigh-pressure subduction-zone metamorphism and tectonics; geobotanical studies of arid mountains; and earth system science/remote sensing. Dr. Ernst is a trustee of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C. (1990–present) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (chair section on geology and geography, 2001), the Geological Society of America (president, 1985–1986; Penrose Medal, 2004), and the Mineralogical Society of America (president, 1980–1981; Roebling Medal, 2006).


Shelley A. Hearne is executive director of Trust for America’s Health and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she teaches public health infrastructure, policy, and advocacy. She was formerly executive director of the Pew Environmental Health Commission at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Hearne is the immediate past-chair of the American Public Health Association’s Executive Board, and she has served on many national organizations, including as vice president of the Council on Education for Public Health. Dr. Hearne has previously worked as a program officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts, as acting director of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Pollution Prevention, and as a research scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She holds a B.A. degree in chemistry and environmental studies with honors from Bowdoin College and a doctorate in environmental health sciences from Columbia University’s School of Public Health.


Jonathan D. Mayer is professor of epidemiology, international health, and geography at the University of Washington, with major interests in infectious disease epidemiology and environmental epidemiology. He has served on several National Institutes of Health committees, as well as the Institute of Medicine–National Research Council Committee on Climate, Ecosystems, Infectious Diseases, and Human Health. He is also an affiliate of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, an affiliate of the International Health Program, and a member of the clinical staff of the Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease Service of the University of Washington Medical Center. He is an elected member of the American College of Epidemiology. Dr. Mayer’s specialties are infectious diseases, society, and environmental change; disease ecology; and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. He is also director of UW’s Undergraduate Program in Public Health. His research focuses on the ecology of infectious diseases, global change and climate change and their impact on infectious diseases and population health, and the use of spatial analysis and Geospatial In-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×

formation Systems in understanding infectious disease patterns. His planned future projects include work in clinical and genetic epidemiology. Dr. Mayer has a B.A. from the University of Rochester and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan.


Jonathan Patz is associate professor of environmental studies and population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a joint appointment with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Population Health Sciences. He was formerly director of the Program on Health Effects of Global Environmental Change and assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research activities are focused on the effects of climate change on head waves, air pollution and water- and vectorborne diseases, and the link between deforestation and resurgent diseases in the Amazon. He was cochair for the U.S. National Assessment on Climate Variability and Change health sector expert panel and convening lead author for the United Nations/World Bank Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Dr. Patz holds joint faculty appointments with the Departments of Epidemiology, International Health, Microbiology, Medicine, and Earth and Planetary Sciences, and he is also an affiliate scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research. He has medical board certification in both occupational/ environmental medicine and family medicine and received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and his M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University.


Ian L. Pepper is director of both the Environmental Research Laboratory and the National Science Foundation Water Quality Center, both at the University of Arizona. He is also a professor and research scientist with the Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Science, and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Arizona. Dr. Pepper is an environmental microbiologist specializing in the molecular ecology of the environment. He is a fellow of the Soil Science Society of America, the American Society of Agronomy, and the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Pepper has a B.Sc. from the University of Birmingham, Great Britain, and M.S and Ph.D. degrees from Ohio State University.

Liaison from the Board on Health Sciences Policy:

Bernard D. Goldstein (IOM) is dean of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Previously he served as director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, a joint pro-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×

gram of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He was also principal investigator of the Consortium of Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation. Dr. Goldstein was assistant administrator for research and development, Environmental Protection Agency, 1983–1985. His past activities include member and chairman of the NIH Toxicology Study Section and EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and chair of the Institute of Medicine Committee on the Role of the Physician in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the National Research Council Committees on Biomarkers in Environmental Health Research and Risk Assessment Methodology and the Industry Panel of the World Health Organization Commission on Health and Environment. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, where he has chaired the Section on Public, Biostatistics, and Epidemiology.

National Research Council Staff

David A. Feary is a senior program officer with the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, National Research Council. He earned his Ph.D. at the Australian National University before spending 15 years as a research scientist working on continental margin evolution in the marine program at the Australian Geological Survey Organisation. During this time he participated in numerous research cruises—many as chief or co-chief scientist—and most recently was co-chief scientist for the Ocean Drilling Program Leg 182. His research activities have focused on the role of climate as a primary control on carbonate reef formation and developing an improved understanding of cool-water carbonate depositional processes.


Christine M. Coussens is a program officer with the Board on Health Sciences Policy, Institute of Medicine. Currently, she is study director of the Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine—a neutral environment for key stakeholders in environmental health to gather and discuss areas of mutual concern. She received her Ph.D. in biomedical sciences with a concentration in neuroscience from Northeastern Ohio College of Medicine/Kent State University. As a research fellow at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, she coauthored numerous papers on synaptic plasticity and learning and memory. Since joining the IOM, she has worked on reports analyzing national formulary system of the Department of Veterans Affairs and nervous systems disorders in developing countries.


Caetlin M. Ofiesh is a research associate with the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, National Research Council. Since graduating from

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×

Amherst College with a B.A. in geology, she has worked in the Boulder, Colorado, Office of Environmental Defense and spent a semester teaching geology to high school sophomores in Zermatt, Switzerland. Prior to that, she interned at the American Geological Institute in Alexandria, Virginia, and worked as a research assistant at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering, where she published a paper on global food and water supply issues.


Amanda M. Roberts was a senior program assistant with the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources until August 2006. Before working at the National Academies she interned at the Fund for Peace in Washington, D.C., working on the Human Rights and Business Roundtable. She also worked in Equatorial Guinea, Africa, with the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program. She is a master’s degree student at The Johns Hopkins University in the Environment and Policy program and holds an M.A. in international peace and conflict resolution from Arcadia University, specializing in environmental conflict in sub-Sahara Africa.


Nicholas D. Rogers is a senior program assistant with the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, National Research Council. He received a B.A. in history, with a focus on the history of science and early American history, from Western Connecticut State University in 2004. He began working for the National Academies in 2006 and has primarily supported the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources on earth resource and geographical science issues.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 165
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 166
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 167
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 168
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 169
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 170
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 171
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 172
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 173
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2007. Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11809.
×
Page 174
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A range of natural earth materials, like arsenic or fluoride, have long been linked to significant human health effects. Improved understanding of the pervasive and complex interactions between earth materials and human health will require creative collaborations between earth scientists and public health professionals. At the request of the National Science Foundation, U.S. Geological Survey, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, this National Research Council book assesses the current state of knowledge at the interface between the earth sciences and public health disciplines. The book identifies high-priority areas for collaborative research, including understanding the transport and bioavailability of potentially hazardous earth materials, using risk-based scenarios to mitigate the public health effects of natural hazards under current and future climate regimes, and understanding the health risks that result from disturbance of earth systems. Geospatial information - geological maps for earth scientists and epidemiological data for public health professionals - is identified as one of the essential integrative tools that is fundamental to the activities of both communities. The book also calls for increased data sharing between agencies to promote interdisciplinary research without compromising privacy.

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