National Academies Press: OpenBook
« Previous: Appendix E: Forum Member Biographies
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

Appendix F

Speaker Biographies

Karen Bartlett, Ph.D., M.Sc., received her B.A. from the University of Victoria, her M.Sc. in Occupational Hygiene from the University of British Columbia (UBC), and her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies (Environmental Health) also from UBC. She completed postdoctoral training in Inhalation Toxicology at the University of Iowa. She is an associate professor in the School of Environmental Health, in the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at UBC. Dr. Bartlett’s current research interests are in four thematic areas: environmental sources of infectious disease; mold and building material interactions (the built environment); animal models of lung infections for therapeutic protocols; and occupational and environmental exposure to airborne biologic particles. Examples of recent research are bioaerosol exposures in the built environment (including First Nations housing); exposures to compost workers; and environmental sources of Cryptococcus gattii. Dr. Bartlett is an adjunct faculty in the Department of Pathology, UBC, and an associate faculty member in the Institute of Resource and Environmental Sustainability and the School of Populations and Public Health.

Meredith Blackwell, Ph.D., is interested in phylogeny, evolution, and life history studies of fungi associated with arthropods. Her current research focuses on the interactions between gut yeasts of fungus- and wood-feeding beetles. She and her colleagues have sampled yeasts from a largely unexplored habitat—the gut of beetles in the United States, Latin America, and Thailand—and discovered more than 200 undescribed species, about 20 percent of all known yeasts. Furthermore, gene cloning and imaging studies have led to the discovery of a larger community of gut organisms in wood-feeding beetles, including parabasalids and bacteria as well as the yeasts that produce enzymes that degrade plant cell walls.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

Dr. Blackwell, who is Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University, has been involved in several projects involving the fungal systematics community. The recent Deep Hypha and Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life projects involved more than 100 mycologists from 25 countries in phylogenetic studies of major groups of fungi and a phylogenetic classification used in many major publications. Dr. Blackwell is a Distinguished Mycologist of the Mycological Society of America and Fellow of the British Mycological Society. She served as president of the International Mycological Association and the Mycological Society of America and is coauthor of Introductory Mycology, a widely used textbook currently under revision.

David Blehert, Ph.D., earned his doctorate degree in bacteriology in 1999 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he studied the biotransformation of munitions manufacturing wastes as mediated by soil bacteria. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland where he investigated bacterial communication mechanisms among constituents of the human dental plaque community. His research emphasis was on the role of the signaling molecule autoinducer-2 in the formation of bacterial biofilms. Dr. Blehert joined the U.S. Geological Survey–National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2003 as the head of the diagnostic microbiology laboratory. Current research projects under way in his laboratory include characterization of microbial aspects of the pathogenesis and epidemiology of bat whitenose syndrome; the use of molecular markers to understand the epidemiology of avian cholera in wild waterfowl; and development of rapid in vitro techniques for the detection of botulinum neurotoxins. His laboratory’s collaborative efforts to identify the fungus that causes the skin infection hallmark of bat white-nose syndrome were published in the January 9, 2009, issue of Science.

Arturo Casadevall, M.D., Ph.D., is the Leo and Julia Forchheimer Professor and Chair of Microbiology & Immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Casadevall received both his M.D. and Ph.D. (biochemistry) degrees from New York University in New York. Subsequently, he completed internship and residency in internal medicine at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Later he completed subspecialty training in infectious diseases. Dr. Casadevall’s major research interests are in fungal pathogenesis and the mechanism of antibody action. Dr. Casadevall has authored more than 470 scientific papers. He has been elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation, American Academy of Physicians, and American Academy of Microbiology. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and has received numerous honors. In 2005, he received the Alumni Award in basic science from his alma mater, New York University. Dr. Casadevall is editor in chief of mBio and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Clini-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

cal Investigation and the Journal of Experimental Medicine. In 2008, he received the Hinton Award from the American Society for Medicine for his efforts in training scientists from underrepresented minority groups.

Peter Daszak, Ph.D., is president of EcoHealth Alliance (formerly Wildlife Trust), a U.S.-based organization that conducts research and field programs on global health and conservation. At Wildlife Trust, Dr. Daszak manages a headquarters staff of 35 and a global staff of more than 700. The staff conduct research and manage initiatives to prevent emerging pandemics and to conserve wildlife biodiversity. This includes research on zoonoses that spill over from wildlife in emerging disease “hot spots,” including influenza, Nipah virus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus, and others. Dr. Daszak’s work includes identifying the first case of a species extinction due to disease; the discovery of chytridiomycosis, the major cause of global amphibian declines; publishing the first paper to highlight emerging diseases of wildlife; coining the term “pathogen pollution”; discovery of the bat origin of SARS-like coronaviruses; identifying the drivers of Nipah and Hendra virus emergence; and producing the first emerging disease “hot spots” map.

Dr. Daszak is a member of the Council of Advisors of the One Health Commission, Treasurer of DIVERSITAS, past member of the International Standing Advisory Board of the Australian Biosecurity CRC, and past member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Global Surveillance for Emerging Zoonoses and the National Research Council (NRC) committee on the future of veterinary research. He is editor in chief of the Springer journal Ecohealth and past treasurer and a founding director of the International Ecohealth Association. In 2000, he won the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation medal for collaborative research in the discovery of amphibian chytridiomycosis. He has published more than 130 scientific papers and book chapters, including papers in Science, Nature, PNAS, The Lancet, PLoS Biology, and other leading journals. His work has been the focus of articles in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, US News & World Report, CBS, 60 Minutes, CNN, ABC, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and Morning Edition & Fresh Air with Terri Gross. He is a former guest worker at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he assisted in the pathology activity during the 1999 Nipah virus outbreak. His work is funded by the John E. Fogarty International Center of NIH, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Google.org, Rockefeller, and other foundations. To date, his group is one of the few to have been awarded three prestigious NIH/NSF Ecology of Infectious Disease awards and is one of four partners to share a recent multimillion-dollar award from USAID (“PREDICT”) with the goal of predicting and preventing the next emerging zoonotic disease.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

Matthew C. Fisher, Ph.D., currently holds the appointment of reader in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Imperial College London. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. in biology from Edinburgh University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

Global health necessitates the adoption of a broad perspective: Anthropogenic activity is accelerating global changes, with inevitable decreases in human welfare as ecosystems deteriorate. His research program focuses on the kingdom Fungi, whose impact on global health is increasing as a consequence of global changes. Broadly Dr. Fisher’s research investigates the changing impact of fungal disease by focusing on two themes: The first, fungal disease ecology, ascertains the environmental envelopes that are associated with mycoses, and the occurrence of fungal pandemics and panzootics. This theme has, at its core, the idea that anthropogenic activity is widely mixing fungal pathogens across global scales. However, the manifestation of disease only occurs if a match occurs between the invader-fungus and the recipient-host/biome: He investigates this within current and future-climate scenarios for several important human, animal, and plant pathogens. The second theme is fungal evolution, and here he investigates the adaptive stored potential that exists within different fungal pathogens. Dr. Fisher’s combined use of population genetics, comparative genomics, and molecular epidemiology are used to decipher the evolutionary histories of mycoses, to investigate their origins, and to predict their future trajectories as pathogens.

John N. Galgiani, M.D., was born in San Francisco, received his B.A. from Stanford University, his M.D. from Northwestern University, and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases from Stanford. In 1978, Dr. Galgiani joined the faculty of the University of Arizona currently he is Professor of Medicine. Dr. Galgiani has focused his career primarily on the special problems of coccidioidomycosis (Valley Fever) and its impact on the general population and special groups such as organ transplant recipients and patients with AIDS. For 19 years, he was project director of an NIH-sponsored coccidioidomycosis clinical trials group. Dr. Galgiani’s laboratory has collaborated in efforts to develop vaccines to prevent Valley Fever. For the past 5 years, Dr. Galgiani has led a development program for nikkomycin Z, a possible cure for Valley Fever, now in clinical trials. In 1996, Dr. Galgiani founded the Valley Fever Center for Excellence to disseminate information about Valley Fever, help patients with the severest complications of this disease, and encourage research into the biology and diseases of its etiologic agent.

Julie Harris, Ph.D., M.P.H., received her bachelors’ degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, her Ph.D. in microbiology from Columbia University and her M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins in epidemiology before joining the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service in 2007, where she worked on the prevention and control of enteric infections in the United States and in several countries in Africa.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

She joined the Mycotic Diseases Branch at the CDC in 2009, where her first task was to create a surveillance system for Cryptococcus gattii, an emerging fungal infection in the Pacific Northwest. She also works on mycotoxins in Bangladesh and Guatemala, cryptococcal infections in Thailand, and coccidioidomycosis in the United States.

Joseph Heitman, M.D., Ph.D., is chair and James B. Duke Professor, Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University. He received his B.S. and M.S. in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Chicago, and M.D. and Ph.D. from Cornell and Rockefeller Universities. He was an EMBO fellow at the Biocenter in Switzerland where he pioneered yeast as a model to study immunosuppressive drugs. He elucidated the role of FKBP12 in forming complexes with FK506 and rapamycin that inhibit cell signaling and growth and discovered the targets of rapamycin TOR1/TOR2, pathways conserved from yeasts to humans. Dr. Heitman has been at Duke since 1992, and focuses on model and pathogenic fungi, studying the evolution of sex and roles of sexual reproduction in microbial pathogens; how cells sense and respond to nutrients and the environment; the targets and mechanisms of action of immunosuppressive and antimicrobial drugs; and the genetic and molecular basis of microbial pathogenesis and development. Their discovery of fungal unisexual mating has implications for how sex might create diversity de novo with implications for pathogen evolution and emergence.

Dr. Heitman received the Burroughs Wellcome Scholar Award in Molecular Pathogenic Mycology, the ASBMB AMGEN award, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) Squibb Award. He has taught the Molecular Mycology Course at the MBL since 1998. He is an editor for Eukaryotic Cell, Fungal Genetics and Biology, and PLoS Pathogens; a board member for PLoS Biology, Current Biology, and Cell Host & Microbe; an advisory board member for the Broad Institute Fungal Genome Initiative and the Department of Energy/JGI Fungal Kingdom project; and cochair/chair for the FASEB Microbial Pathogenesis conference (2011, 2013). He is a Fellow of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the IDSA, the American Academy of Microbiology, AAAS, and the Association of American Physicians.

Steven Holland, M.D., received his M.D. and Medicine and Infectious Disease training from Johns Hopkins. He came to NIH in 1989 as a National Research Council fellow in the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, working on transcriptional regulation of HIV. In 1991, Dr. Holland joined the Laboratory of Host Defenses, shifting his research to the host side, with a focus on phagocyte defects and their associated infections. His work centered on the pathogenesis and management of chronic granulomatous disease, as well as other congenital immune defects affecting phagocytes, including those predisposing to mycobacterial and fungal diseases. In 2004, he became chief of the Laboratory of Clinical

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

Infectious Diseases. The laboratory takes a fully integrated approach to infectious disease, incorporating the molecular genetics of the host and the pathogen as well as mechanisms of pathogenesis that allow the development and study of novel therapeutics. The integrated bench-to-bedside model adds clinical insight into mechanisms of action and therapy. The laboratory has been engaged in the human genetics of fungal susceptibility for several years, identifying specific Mendelian associations with genes in the NADPH, STAT3, DOCK8, and interferon gamma/IL-12 pathways.

Mogens Støvring Hovmøller, Ph.D., is senior plant pathologist at Aarhus University, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Integrated Pest Management in Denmark. He completed his Ph.D. in 1991 at the Royal and Veterinary and Agricultural University (now Copenhagen University) in population genetics of fungal crop pathogens. His research interests expand from host–pathogen and pathogen–environment interactions to population genetics, evolutionary biology, and epidemiology of crop pathogens. He has been involved in multiple international research projects focusing on dispersal and evolution of Puccinia striiformis, a basidiomycete fungus causing yellow rust on wheat. He is a board member of the European and Mediterranean Cereal Rust Foundation and member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative. He is leading a Global Rust Reference Center (GRRC) located in Denmark, which was launched in 2009 by Aarhus University, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). GRRC is complementing existing wheat rust surveillance efforts by the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, CIMMYT, ICARDA, and national rust diagnostic laboratories in Europe, Australia, North America, and elsewhere, and extends and maintain a wheat rust gene bank to support international resistance breeding and research.

Barbara Howlett, Ph.D., has a B.Sc. (Honors) in biochemistry and a Ph.D. in botany from University of Melbourne, Australia. She has also spent time at the Australian National University, Canberra, University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. She has worked in a diverse range of research areas, including immunology, memory in bacteria chemotaxis, nitrogen fixation, and plant disease. Her current research is on blackleg, the major disease of the oilseed crop, canola. Her approach to this topic is multidisciplinary and holistic, ranging from developing disease management strategies for farmers, to coleading an initiative to sequence and annotate the genome of the blackleg fungus. She is also interested in parallels and differences between fungal pathogenesis of plants and animals. These experiences and her membership on a panel of the Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation, which invests $AUD120 million pa into grains research, have familiarized her with disease threats to agriculture and food production. Dr. Howlett has published more than 110 refereed scientific articles.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

She is an associate editor of PLoS Pathogens, a senior editor of Molecular Plant Pathology, and on the editorial board of Eukaryotic Cell.

Mike Jeger, Ph.D., is a professor in the Division of Biology, Imperial College London, based at the Silwood Park campus, near Ascot, U.K. His research interests are in quantitative plant disease epidemiology, mathematical modeling, and disease management. He has worked on a wide range of plant–pathogen systems, including fungal (and other) pathogens of agricultural and horticultural crops, forest trees, and plants in natural grassland communities and has published extensively in the related scientific literature. He currently works on theoretical models concerning the spread of exotic plant pathogens in networks, such as in the horticultural nursery trade, where invasion criteria and the potential size of disease outbreaks depend critically on network structure. He is involved professionally and internationally in issues relating to plant health and is currently chair of the Plant Health Panel of the European Food Standards Agency, which provides independent advice to the European Commission. He will soon take up an emeritus professorship and become a senior research investigator in the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College, where he will work on policy and technical issues relating to biosecurity.

Lawrence C. Madoff, M.D., serves as director of epidemiology and immunization for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, where he oversees programs related to infectious disease threats in the commonwealth. He is an academic infectious disease physician specializing in the epidemiology of emerging pathogens, bacterial vaccine development, and international health. He is a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and is on the attending staff at University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. In addition, Dr. Madoff has been the editor of ProMED-mail, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, since 2002. In this capacity, he has expanded the program to more than 50,000 participants and extended its reach through the development of regional projects in the Mekong Basin, Africa, and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. Dr. Madoff chaired the organizing committees for the International Meetings on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance in 2007, 2009, and 2011. He is a member of the American Society for Microbiology, the International Society for Infectious Diseases, and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists; past president of the U.S. Lancefield Streptococcal Research Society; and a Fellow of the IDSA and the American College of Physicians.

Luis Padilla, D.V.M., has served as the staff clinical veterinarian for the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute of the National Zoological Park in Front Royal, Virginia, since 2007. He received his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University, where he also obtained a B.S. degree in biology. Dr.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

Padilla completed postdoctoral clinical training at the Oradell Animal Hospital in New Jersey and at the Saint Louis Zoo, in Missouri. After serving as associate veterinarian at the Oklahoma City Zoo and as adjunct professor of zoological medicine at Oklahoma State University, Dr. Padilla joined the Smithsonian’s National Zoo as a supervisory veterinarian in 2006. His academic interests are in the anesthesia of wildlife and non-domestic species, ungulate medicine and advanced disease diagnostics, and the use of captive animals as models to understand disease dynamics in free-ranging populations. He serves as the veterinary advisor for the clouded leopard species survival plan and is a Diplomate of the American College of Zoological Medicine.

David Rizzo, Ph.D., received his Ph.D. in plant pathology from the University of Minnesota and joined the faculty of the University of California-Davis, Department of Plant Pathology and the Graduate Group in Ecology in 1995. Research in his lab focuses on the ecology and management of forest tree diseases, including diseases caused by both native and introduced pathogens. Research in the lab takes a multiscale approach ranging from experimental studies on the basic biology of organisms to field studies across forest landscapes. Active collaborations include projects with landscape ecologists, epidemiologists, molecular biologists, entomologists, and forest managers. The primary research effort in the lab is currently Phytophthora species in California coastal forests, with an emphasis on sudden oak death. In conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the lab studies a variety of diseases and their relationship to past and present forest management and conservation issues. In addition to research, Dr. Rizzo teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in mycology. Since 2004, he has been director of the Science and Society program in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Dr. Rizzo also serves as the scientific advisor for the California Oak Mortality Task Force.

Erica Bree Rosenblum, Ph.D., is an evolutionary biologist focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms of evolution. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Idaho. Dr. Rosenblum’s research emphasizes understanding the processes that generate and impact biological diversity (i.e., speciation and extinction). She uses genetic and genomics tools in the lab, but also works with endangered species in their natural habitats. Much of her current work focuses on understanding mechanisms of host–pathogen interaction between frogs and the chytrid fungus responsible for amphibian declines. She collaborates with an international, multidisciplinary working group to understand the catastrophic impacts of this emerging fungal pathogen. In addition to her research, Dr. Rosenblum contributes to a variety of educational initiatives, and her work has been featured in a number of forums, including the New York Times, the Discovery Channel, Science, Ranger Rick, and Natural History Magazine. Dr. Rosenblum received her B.A. from the Ecology

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

and Evolutionary Biology Department at Brown University and completed her Ph.D. in the Integrative Biology Department at the University of California–Berkeley. She conducted her postdoctoral research as an NSF Bioinformatics Fellow in the Department of Genome Sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her work is funded by the NSF and NIH.

Jim Stack, Ph.D., is director of the Great Plains Diagnostic Network (GPDN) and a professor of plant pathology at Kansas State University. As director of GPDN, Dr. Stack coordinates a nine-state project for the rapid detection and accurate diagnosis of high-consequence pathogens and pests. He is the Principal Investigator of a plant biosecurity project at the National Agriculture Biosecurity Center and has collaborated on several international projects regarding plant biosecurity. Prior to joining Kansas State, Dr. Stack was on the faculty at the University of Nebraska and at Texas A&M University. He formerly worked for EcoScience Corporation as the director of applied research, leading the discovery, development, and commercialization of microbe-based products to protect fruit from storage decay pathogens. His research interests include pathogen detection and diagnostics, pathogen ecology, and epidemiology.

Compton Tucker, Ph.D., is a senior earth scientist in the Biospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences Laboratory at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. A native of Carlsbad, New Mexico, he holds a B.S. degree in biology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in forestry, all from Colorado State University. Upon completing his B.S. in biology, he worked at Colorado National Bank in Denver and the First National Bank of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Realizing that banking was not his calling, he entered graduate school at Colorado State University and was associated with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory for his graduate work. After completing his Ph.D. degree in 1975, he was a National Academy of Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center before joining NASA as a physical scientist. He is the author of approximately 165 journal articles on the use of remote sensing to study vegetation that have been cited more than 14,000 times. In collaboration with coworkers, he is presently studying tropical deforestation and fragmentation, global variations in photosynthetic capacity, climatically coupled diseases, tropical glacier variation from Bolivia to Mexico, and climate using satellite and ground data. He was on NASA detail to the Climate Change Science Program from 2006 to 2009. He is the recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, the Henry Shaw Medal from the Missouri Botanical Garden, National Air and Space Museum Trophy, the William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Sciences, the Mongolian Friendship Medal, the William T. Pecora Award from the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Galathea Medal from the Royal Danish Geographical Society. He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Society.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

Vance Vredenburg, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of biology at San Francisco State University. His research includes studies on the ecology, evolution, and conservation of amphibians. His current research investigates the impacts of emerging infectious disease on amphibian hosts. With a collaborative team, he studies chytridiomycosis, the lethal amphibian disease caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which is implicated in mass die-offs of amphibians globally. Dr. Vredenburg and colleagues recently documented the spread of Bd through susceptible frog populations in the protected parks of the Sierra Nevada, California. While most populations are driven completely to extinction after pathogen arrival, a few populations survive. His most recent work investigates the role that symbiotic skin microbes (e.g., Janthinobacterium lividim, a bacterium) may play in frog host immunity.

Dr. Vredenburg received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002. He is a cofounder of AmphibiaWeb (www.AmphibiaWeb.org), an online conservation resource for the world’s amphibians that receives an average of more than 20,000 successful searches per day from students, research biologists, and conservationists worldwide. Dr. Vredenburg is a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. His research is funded by the NSF.

Ché Weldon, Ph.D., M.Sc., holds research interests that have always been centered on amphibians, which started in 1997 with host–parasite interactions (B.Sc. Honors project) and was followed by an in-depth assessment of the sustainable global use of African clawed frogs (M.Sc. project, 1998–1999). The following year, as a field biologist with the Southern African Frog Atlas and Red Data Project, Dr. Weldon developed a more focused interest in amphibian conservation. It was during this time that the amphibian chytrid fungus was first detected and a global surge started to investigate its role in amphibian declines. For his studies on amphibian chytrid in South Africa, Dr. Weldon received the W.O. Neitz medal for best Ph.D. thesis in parasitology. With then-supervisor L. H. du Preez, Dr. Weldon established the African Amphibian Conservation Research Group. Dr. Weldon specialized in amphibian diseases in Africa as a Postdoctoral Fellowship at North-West University, and later became a zoology lecturer at the university where he has continued his research on the amphibian chytrid and amphibian conservation. From the 12 peer-reviewed articles that Dr. Weldon has authored in the past 6 years, 6 have been cited a total of 130 times.

Gudrun Wibbelt, D.V.M., M.R.C.V.S., graduated from University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany, followed by a residency for veterinary pathology at University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. Since 2005 she is a certified veterinary pathologist with a special focus on wildlife and zoo animal diseases. She heads the wildlife pathology and electron microscopy unit of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, which has a unique standing in

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

wildlife and nature conservation research in Germany/Europe. For more than 5 years, one of her main research interests has been the diseases of European bats, with special emphasis on the correlation of histopathology and bacteriology/virology, an aspect largely neglected by investigations on bats and emerging diseases. With the emergence of white-nose syndrome of bats in the United States, she leads collaborative European research efforts on fungal infections in native bats from Europe.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×

This page intentionally left blank.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 455
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 456
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 457
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 458
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 459
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 460
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 461
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 462
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 463
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 464
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 465
Suggested Citation:"Appendix FSpeaker Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13147.
×
Page 466
Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health: Workshop Summary Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $94.00 Buy Ebook | $74.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

Fungal diseases have contributed to death and disability in humans, triggered global wildlife extinctions and population declines, devastated agricultural crops, and altered forest ecosystem dynamics. Despite the extensive influence of fungi on health and economic well-being, the threats posed by emerging fungal pathogens to life on Earth are often underappreciated and poorly understood. On December 14 and 15, 2010, the IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats hosted a public workshop to explore the scientific and policy dimensions associated with the causes and consequences of emerging fungal diseases.

  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!