![[logo] US EPA](http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
2007 CompTox Forum
Speaker Biographies
Ellen L. Berg, Ph.D.
Dr. Ellen Berg is currently Chief Scientific Officer at BioSeek, Inc. in Burlingame, CA. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Cell Biology, and Molecular Biology from Northwestern University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, where she supported the American Cancer Society and served as a Special Fellow of the Leukemia Society of America. Prior to founding BioSeek in 2000, Dr. Berg was a Senior Scientist at Protein Design Labs, Inc. where she was involved in the discovery and development of therapeutic antibodies for treatment of inflammatory diseases. Her research interests include mechanisms of inflammatory and cardiovascular disease biology, the regulation of cell signaling networks, and new approaches for the discovery of novel therapeutics. Dr. Berg is co-inventor of a number of patents in the field of inflammation biology and has authored over 60 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Robert S. Boethling, Ph.D.
Dr. Robert (Bob) Boethling is a microbiologist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), Exposure Assessment Branch. He earned his Ph.D. at UCLA in 1976 and joined EPA in 1980 after a postdoctoral fellowship under Prof. Martin Alexander at Cornell University. Dr. Boethling's expertise is in biodegradation, and design and development of environmental fate data resources and estimation methods. In the latter field, he has helped develop several widely used methods for estimating chemical properties and environmental fate, and is EPA's contact for the Estimation Programs Interface (EPI) Suite©. Dr. Boethling is OPPT's lead for development of test guidelines in the areas of chemical properties and environmental fate. He has also been active in OPPT's work on: persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic substances (PBTs); High Production Volume Chemicals (HPVC) testing and assessment; and, review of new chemicals under section 5 of the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act. Dr. Boethling has been a promoter of green chemistry principles since publication of the seminal American Chemical Society (ACS) symposia volumes 577 and 640 in the mid-1990's, and was an editor (with Prof. Donald Mackay) of the Handbook of Property Estimation Methods for Chemicals: Environmental Health Sciences (©2000 CRC Press).
Michael S. Breen, Ph.D.
Dr. Michael Breen received his B.S. from the University of Massachusetts, his M.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. In 2005, he joined Dr. Rory Conolly's computational systems biology group in the National Center for Computational Toxicology at the U.S. EPA. Dr. Breen has many years of mathematical modeling research experience in both academia and industry. He has authored 15 refereed publications and over 50 proceedings and peer-reviewed abstracts, including two pending U.S. patents and three award-winning papers from international competitions. Dr. Breen is a member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT) and received the SOT Biological Modeling Specialty Section Award in 2006. He is a peer‑reviewer for the Annals of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Breen's research interests are in computational systems biology modeling to predict mechanisms of dose-response behavior to environmental chemicals.
Steve Bryant, Ph.D.
Dr. Stephen Bryant has been a Senior Investigator in the National Center for Biotechnology Information's (NCBI's) Computational Biology Branch since 1991. His research group focuses its efforts in the area of structural bioinformatics. Dr. Bryant also leads NCBI information resource teams in the areas of protein structure, protein family classification, and cheminformatics. These teams maintain NCBI's Molecular Modeling Database MMDB, the Cn3D comparative analysis visualization tool, the Conserved Domain Database CDD, and, most recently, the PubChem database.
Lionel A. Carreira, Ph.D.
Dr. Lionel A. Carreira received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969. Professor Carreira's research focuses on the fate and transport of metals and organics in the environment with a particular emphasis on speciation. These research efforts involve both the development and application of a novel program called SPARC (SPARC Performs Automated Reasoning in Chemistry). The SPARC program was created to address the gap in predictive chemical fate modeling.
Fanqing Frank Chen, Ph.D.
Dr. Fanqing Frank Chen is a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California. He is on the Editorial Board of Nanotoxicology, the first journal fully dedicated to nanotoxicity. Dr. Chen's main interest is in nano-bio hybrid structure for biosensors, clinical imaging, and nano-bio interaction. He is also the first to use a quantitative biology approach to decipher the health impact of nanomaterials at the molecular level. Dr. Chen's study on nanotoxicity was highlighted in the Washington Post. He is the organizer of the Chinese Nanosafety Committee, serves on the organizing committee of the Nanotoxicology Conference (U.S. and Europe), and is one of the founding members of the Berkeley Nano Roundtable. Dr. Chen received his B.S. in 1991 from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and his Ph.D. from the joint graduate program of Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of New Mexico in 1997. He conducted postdoctoral research at Los Alamos and the New York University Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Chen joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2000. He is also adjunct professor at Fudan University, Zhejiang University in China, and chief founder for a new nanomedicine institute in Jiangsu, China.
Harvey J. Clewell III
Harvey J. Clewell III is the Director of the Center for Human Health Assessment at the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences. He has over 25 years of experience in research and consulting in the areas of toxicology, risk assessment, environmental quality, and hazardous materials management. He has gained an international reputation for his research on the application of physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling to chemical risk assessment and pharmaceutical safety assessment. Mr. Clewell's current research interests include the application of PBPK modeling to the interpretation of human biomonitoring data, the incorporation of genomic dose-response information in quantitative risk assessment, and the development of biologically based dose response modeling approaches for inhaled irritants.
Rory B. Conolly, Sc.D., D.A.B.T.
Dr. Rory Conolly is a Senior Research Biologist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) National Center for Computational Toxicology in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Dr. Conolly received formal training in biology and toxicology and became interested in physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models in the early 1980's. More recently, Dr. Conolly played a lead role in development of a biologically-motivated cancer risk assessment for formaldehyde. He continues to work on a refined version of this assessment. Other current interests include application of the methods of computational systems biology to toxicology. This effort includes the study of how relatively complicated protein interaction maps can be modularized to provide simpler but functionally accurate descriptions of signaling and regulatory behaviors.
Dr. Conolly received the U.S. Society of Toxicology's (SOT) Lehman Award for lifetime achievement in risk assessment in 2005. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology from 2004 until joining the U.S. EPA in 2005, President of the SOT Biological Modeling Specialty Section (2000 – 2001), President of the SOT Risk Assessment Specialty Section (1997 – 1998), a member of the SOT Risk Assessment Task Force (1998 – 2000), and is currently a member of the SOT Mixtures Task Force (2005 – present). Dr. Conolly is Adjunct Professor of Biomathematics at North Carolina State University.
He received a B.S. in Biology from Harvard College in 1972, a Ph.D. in Physiology/Toxicology from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1978, and spent a post-doctoral year at the Central Toxicology Laboratory of Imperial Chemical Industries, PLC, in Cheshire, England. In 1989, Dr. Conolly joined the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology (CIIT, later called the CIIT Centers for Health Research). He worked at CIIT until 2005, when he joined EPA.
Richard Corley, Ph.D.
Dr. Richard Corley received his Ph.D. in Environmental Toxicology from the University of Illinois in 1985 and is currently a Laboratory Fellow in the Biological Monitoring & Modeling Group, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Prior to joining PNNL in 1996, he spent 11 years at Dow Chemical's Toxicology Research Laboratory as a scientist and group leader of the chronic toxicology and inhalation toxicology groups. He currently serves as a consultant for several industrial research organizations and has been a member of several governmental and industrial committees, working groups and advisory panels. Dr. Corley's general research interests include the development and application of physiologically based pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic models (PBPK/PD) for human health risk assessment. His current research activities focus upon the development and validation of 3-dimensional, computational fluid dynamics models of the respiratory system.
Christopher Cramer, Ph.D.
Dr. Christopher Cramer majored in both Chemistry and Mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis, graduating with an A.B. summa cum laude in 1983. He subsequently did graduate work in organic synthesis with Scott Denmark at the University of Illinois, from which he earned his Ph.D. in 1988. Dr. Cramer's professional career began with four and one half years of service as an active-duty officer in the United States Army, which included a tour in Korea, research experience at Aberdeen Proving Ground (where he expanded his expertise in computational chemistry), and combat duty in Operation Desert Storm. In 1992, he began his academic career at the University of Minnesota, where he remains today. Dr. Cramer is currently a Distinguished McKnight and University Teaching Professor in the Chemistry Department, and serves as the Editor of Theoretical Chemistry Accounts and as the North American Editor for the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry. He is the author of the textbook Essentials of Computational Chemistry, Theories and Models.
David Dix, Ph.D.
Dr. David Dix is a research biologist in the U.S. EPA's National Center for Computational Toxicology (NCCT) in the Office of Research and Development at Research Triangle Park, NC. Within the NCCT, Dr. Dix is working with colleagues to build the ToxCast™research program, testing the utility of computational chemistry, high-throughput screening and toxicogenomics to categorize chemicals and predict toxicity. Dr. Dix has been with the Agency since 1995. Prior to joining NCCT, he led the Genomics Effects Team in the Reproductive Toxicology Division of the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory. Dr. Dix is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Environmental Toxicology at North Carolina State University (NCSU). His received his undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago, his Ph.D. in Physiology from Rush University in Chicago, and completed his postdoctoral training at NCSU and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Amanda Drake, Ph.D.
Dr. Amanda Drake is an MRC Clinician Scientist at the University of Edinburgh and Honorary Consultant Paediatric Endocrinologist at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh. She studied Medicine at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and was awarded her Ph.D. by the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Drake's research interests are in the Early Life Origins of Disease and in childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Sean Ekins, Ph.D.
Dr. Sean Ekins received his M.Sc., Ph.D., and D.Sc. from the University of Aberdeen and was a postdoctoral fellow at Lilly Research Laboratories. He has worked as a senior scientist at Pfizer and as a Senior Computational Chemist at Lilly Research Laboratories, and has served as Associate Director of Computational Drug Discovery at Concurrent Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and as Vice President of Computational Biology at GeneGo. Currently, Dr. Ekins is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacy Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, at the University of Maryland, Senior Vice President of Computational Biology at Arnold Consultancy and Technology LLC, Vice President of Product Development at Reify, Inc., and a Senior Consultant at Collaborations in Chemistry Inc. He is also on the scientific advisory board for Emiliem Inc. and the advisory board for Chemical Informatics at Indiana University. Dr. Ekins has authored or co-authored approximately 90 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and has edited two books. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods, and is on the Editorial Board of Drug Metabolism and Disposition, Drug Discovery Today, Current Drug Metabolism, Drug Metabolism Letters, and the Editorial Advisory Board for Pharmaceutical Research. Dr. Ekins' areas of interest are in vitro and computational ADME/Tox, Systems Biology, informatics and computer-aided drug discovery.
Timothy C. Elston, Ph.D.
Dr. Timothy Elston received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. After receiving his Ph.D., he accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at The Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The final year of this fellowship was spent at the University of California at Berkeley, where Dr. Elston worked with Dr. George Oster to develop mathematical models of energy transduction in motor proteins. From 1998 to 2002, Dr. Elston was a faculty member in the Biomathematics Program at North Carolina State University. During this time, a primary focus of his research was to understand the origins and consequences of stochastic effects in gene expression. In Fall 2002, Dr. Elston joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. Since moving to UNC, his research interests have mostly focused on developing mathematical models of intracellular signaling pathways. In July 2006, Dr. Elston became Director of the Graduate Program in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.
Matthew A. Etterson, Ph.D.
Dr. Matthew Etterson earned a B.A. in Mathematics and Philosophy from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Conservation Biology from the University of Minnesota. Since completing his graduate studies, Dr. Etterson has served as a Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and as an NHEERL Postdoctoral Associate at the Mid-Continent Ecology Division (MED) of the U.S. EPA in Duluth, Minnesota. He is currently a Senior Research Associate at MED and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Dr. Etterson's research interests include avian population ecology, statistical estimation theory, and population-level risk assessment for songbirds.
Mark Fielden, Ph.D., D.A.B.T.
Dr. Mark Fielden recently joined the Investigative Toxicology group at Roche Palo Alto as a research scientist where he will support early drug discovery project teams and conduct investigative studies to understand mechanisms of toxicity for developmental candidates. Prior to joining Roche, he was the Director of Molecular and Investigative Toxicology at Iconix Biosciences in Mountain View, California, where he provided management and scientific leadership to a group of scientists charged with the development and validation of predictive technologies using in vivo and in vitro models, and the application of molecular toxicology and genomic tools to understand mechanisms of drug toxicity. Dr. Fielden also lead dozens of projects with groups in the pharmaceutical industry, government, and academia to apply microarrays for predictive and mechanistic analysis of small molecule drugs across diverse therapeutic areas. He actively participates in industry and government consortiums, such as the Critical Path Institute's Preclinical Safety Testing Consortium and the Microarray Quality Control Consortium. Dr. Fielden has many awards to his credit, including the recent Society of Toxicologic Pathology Best Paper Award in Toxicologic Pathology. He has published over 20 peer reviewed publications, and has submitted a number of patents covering hundreds of preclinical biomarkers. Dr. Fielden completed a joint Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Toxicology at Michigan State University under Dr. Tim Zacharewski, where he applied molecular tools to assess and understand the mechanisms of endocrine disruption, the molecular basis of decreased sperm count and fertility observed following in utero exposure to estrogens, and the toxicity of dioxin-like compounds. He obtained his B.S. in Toxicology from the University of Guelph in Canada.
H. Christopher Frey, Ph.D.
Dr. H. Christopher Frey is a professor of Environmental Engineering in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University. He recently completed a sabbatical at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Exposure Research Laboratory. Dr. Frey's research interests include methods for quantifying variability and uncertainty and their application to environmental data and models. He is co-author of a text on "Probabilistic Exposure Assessment."
Dr. Frey has served in numerous national and international advisory roles, including EPA's Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Scientific Advisory Panel, a World Health Organization panel on probabilistic exposure assessment, and an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expert group that produced the 2000 and 2006 best practice guidelines for characterizing uncertainty in greenhouse gas emissions. He is currently participating in a NARSTO assessment of health and ecological impacts of multi-pollutant emissions.
Dr. Frey is the immediate past President of the Society for Risk Analysis, a recipient of SRA's Chauncey Starr Award, and a Fellow of SRA. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
Anna Georgieva, Ph.D.
Dr. Anna Georgieva is an associate director in the Department of Modeling and Simulation, part of Clinical Development and Medical Affairs at Novartis Pharmaceuticals, East Hanover, New Jersey. She provides modeling support for compounds in both clinical and pre-clinical development to better understand mechanism of action and help in the discovery of markers of both efficacy and toxicity. In addition, Dr. Georgieva has worked on implementing and further developing different types of systems-level models, ranging from signal transduction pathway models to network inference models and cardiac electrophysiology.
George M. Gray, Ph.D.
On November 1, 2005, Dr. George Gray was sworn in to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Research and Development, which is the 1,900-person, $600 million science and technology arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Dr. Gray was appointed to this position by President George W. Bush and confirmed—by unanimous consent—by the U.S. Senate.
Prior to joining EPA, Dr. Gray was Executive Director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and a Lecturer in Risk Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). In 16 years at HSPH, his research focused on scientific bases of human health risk assessment and its application to risk policy with a focus on risk/risk tradeoffs in risk management. Dr. Gray taught toxicology and risk assessment to both graduate students and participants in the School's Continuing Professional Education program.
Dr. Gray holds a B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Michigan, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Toxicology from the University of Rochester.
Thomas Hartung, M.D., Ph.D.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Hartung holds a Diploma in Biochemistry. He earned his Dr.rer.nat. (Ph.D.) at Prof. Wendel's laboratory in Konstanz (Biochemical Pharmacology) in 1991, and his Dr.med. (M.D.) at Prof. Bock's laboratory in Tübingen (Toxicology) in 1992. Dr. Hartung did a medical internship at the University of Freiburg from 1991 to 1992, and specialized in surgery at the hospital of Singen, Germany from 1993–1994. From 1994 to 1999, he worked as an assistant professor at Prof. Wendel's laboratory in Konstanz. Dr. Hartung was CEO of the Steinbeis Technology Transfer Center for In Vitro Pharmacology and Toxicology (InPuT) from 1996 to 2002. From 1999 to 2002, he was an associate professor, non-tenure-track lecturer (habilitation) for pharmacology and toxicology, and a member of the university senate. Dr. Hartung was a Senior Lecturer for Biochemical Pharmacology (C2) from 2001 to 2002. Since 2001, he has served as Vice-President of MEGAT (Mitteleuropaeische Gesellschaft fuer Alternativen zum Tierversuch). In 2002, he became Head of ECVAM (European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods, Joint Research Centre, Italy). In 2003, Dr. Hartung became an honorary full professor of the University of Konstanz, Germany.
Jason M. Haugh, Ph.D.
Dr. Jason Haugh is an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU), where he has been on the faculty since 2000. His laboratory studies signal transduction networks, the molecular mechanisms by which mammalian cells regulate their functional responses to external stimuli, using a quantitative analytical approach that combines biochemical measurements, fluorescence microscopy and image analysis, and mathematical modeling and analysis. Prior to joining the NCSU faculty, Dr. Haugh earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received postdoctoral training at Duke University Medical Center. His research awards include New Faculty and Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards from the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.
Gabriele Hegerl, Ph.D.
Dr. Gabriele Hegerl is a Research Professor at the Nicholas School for the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University. The main area of Dr. Hegerl's research are changes in climate due to natural and anthropogenic changes in radiative forcing (such as greenhouse warming, climate effects of volcanic eruptions and changes in solar radiation). Studying global scale surface temperature observations shows that the 20th century temperature evolution is highly unusual relative to estimates of climate variability, and that greenhouse gas forcing is likely responsible for a large fraction of the 20th century warming. Dr. Hegerl and colleagues are still looking into narrowing uncertainties in that assessment (such as study the effect of uncertainties in model simulations of climate change, and assess if temperature variability of the last millennium is consistent with our interpretation of climate of the 20th century). However, for society changes in more regional aspects of climate and changes in climatic extremes and rainfall have potentially a stronger impact. Dr. Hegerl is therefore studying changes in climate extremes in climate model simulations and tries to detect them in observations. Other interests include detecting change rainfall data, understanding climate variability, particularly variability that influences climate on long timescales, and changes in modes of climate variability such as the Northern and Southern Annular modes and their influence on temperature, rainfall and climate extremes. Dr. Hegerl has been a Coordinating Lead Author of the chapter "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change" of the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, and serves in various committees (e.g. NRC).
Keith Houck, Ph.D.
Dr. Keith Houck received his Ph.D. in Pathology and Toxicology from Duke University. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech in the Molecular Biology Department, he joined Sphinx Pharmaceuticals, a start-up biotechnology company in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, which was later acquired by Eli Lilly and Co. Dr. Houck worked there for 12 years in the Lead Generation Biology group leading teams using high-throughput, high-content screening technologies for drug discovery projects. He joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Center for Computational Toxicology in 2006.
Stephen L. Johnson
Stephen L. Johnson was sworn in as the 11th Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on May 2, 2005. He assumed the position with the stated goal of promoting and maintaining the utilization of sound science while using collaborative, innovative approaches to solving environmental problems. The EPA implements and enforces the nation's federal environmental laws and regulations; the Agency has over 18,000 employees nationwide and an annual budget of $8.6 billion.
Prior to becoming Administrator, Mr. Johnson had served as the Acting Administrator (since January 2005), Deputy Administrator (from August 2004 to January 2005) and Acting Deputy Administrator of the Agency (from July 2003 to August 2004).
Mr. Johnson has been a part of the EPA for 25 years. He was Assistant Administrator of EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) from June 2001 to July 2003. The OPPTS office has responsibility for implementing the nation's pesticide, toxic substances, and pollution prevention laws.
Mr. Johnson had been OPPTS Acting Assistant Administrator since January 2001, and had held top leadership positions in that office since January 1999, first serving as Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator. He was named Deputy Assistant Administrator in April 2000, and then was reassigned as Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator.
He had also served as Deputy Director of the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) since May 1997. And he served for three years in OPP as Director of the Registration Division, where he administered the pesticide registration program, establishing or revoking pesticide tolerances and exemptions and making decisions on emergency exemptions, experimental use permits, new active ingredients, new uses, and state registrations for special local needs.
Other senior level positions held by Mr. Johnson at the EPA include: Director of OPP's Field Operations Division, Deputy Director of OPP's Hazard Evaluation Division and Executive Secretary of the Scientific Advisory Panel for the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Mr. Johnson also has represented the EPA in various national and international pesticide forums sponsored by the United Nations' World Health Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He has held staff and management positions in the EPA's Office of Research and Development and Office of Toxic Substances.
Prior to joining the EPA, Mr. Johnson served as the Director of Operations at Hazelton Laboratories Corporation and Litton Bionetics, Inc.
He has received numerous awards and commendations, capped in 2001 when Mr. Johnson received the Presidential Rank Award for distinguished executives for sustained extraordinary accomplishments. This is the highest award that can be given to a civilian federal employee. In 1997 he was awarded the Presidential Rank Award for meritorious executives for sustained accomplishments, which is the second highest federal employee award.
Mr. Johnson also received the EPA's Excellence in Management Award, seven bronze medals, and the silver medal for superior service as well as the Vice President's Hammer Award for streamlining the pesticide registration program.
Mr. Johnson was born on March 21, 1951 in Washington, DC. He received a B.A. in Biology from Taylor University in Indiana, an M.S. in Pathology from George Washington University, Washington, DC, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of science by Taylor University.
Kate Johnston, Ph.D.
Dr. Kate Johnston is Vice President of Discovery Programs at Cellumen, Inc. in Pittsburgh, PA. She joined Cellumen in 2005, where she is responsible for the development of Cellular Systems Biology models for drug discovery and development applications. Previously, Dr. Johnston was Director of Lead Generation Biology at Eli Lilly's Sphinx Laboratories site. She received her doctorate in Physiology from Duke University, and subsequently held positions at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at UT Southwestern, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Richard Judson, Ph.D.
Dr. Richard Judson is with the U.S. EPA's National Center for Computational Toxicology where he is developing databases and computer applications to predict and model toxicological effects of a wide range of chemicals. Prior to joining EPA, Dr. Judson was founder of GAMA BioConsulting, a bioinformatics company, and SpyroPharma, an anti-viral drug development spin-off from Yale University. From 1999-2006, Dr. Judson was Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer with Genaissance Pharmaceuticals. His prior assignments include a position at Curagen from 1997 to 1998, and a position at Sandia National Laboratories from 1990 to 1996. Dr. Judson is widely published in disciplines including chemistry, genomics, physics, and applied math, and is an inventor on a number of patents. Dr. Judson holds a B.A. in Chemistry and Chemical Physics from Rice University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Princeton University.
Jun Kanno, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Jun Kanno is Head of the Division of Cellular and Molecular Toxicology at the National Institute of Health Sciences (NIHS), Japan, a position he has held since 2002. He specializes in general pathology, endocrine pathology, toxicology, and experimental pathology. Dr. Kanno's research includes molecular toxicology focused on studies on endocrine disrupting chemicals (receptor mediated toxicity), carcinogenesis, and toxicogenomics. He held a teaching position in the Department of Pathology, Tokyo Medical and Dental University from 1986 to 1997, and was a Visiting Scientist in the Cancer Genetics and Molecular Pathology groups at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS/NIH) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina from 1991 to 1993. In 1997, Dr. Kanno was a section chief at NIHS. Dr. Kanno has been involved in the OECD/EDTA Uterotrophic Assay validation as the lead laboratory since 1998; the Toxicogenomics Joint Project of NIHS & Japanese pharmaceuticals since 2002, and the WHO/IPCS Toxicogenomics Workshop, WHO/IPCS Harmonization Project on Cancer, and NIHS Chemical Safety Toxicogenomics Project (Percellome Project) since 2003.
Shinya Kuroda, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Shinya Kuroda is a professor in the Graduate School of Biophysics and Biochemistry, at the University of Tokyo in Japan. He holds an M.D. from the School of Medicine at Kobe University and a Ph.D. from Osaka University in Japan. His laboratory investigates systems biology of signaling networks including ERK-dependent cell fate determination and synaptic plasticity.
Wilfred Li, Ph.D.
Dr. Wilfred Li received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Southern California in 1994 where he studied the molecular chaperone GRP78/BiP as a model system for gene regulation and protein-DNA interaction. While a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), he contributed to the understanding of protein phosphatases in cell growth and apoptosis in the Jun N-Terminal Kinase/Stress Activated Protein Kinase (JNK/SAPK) pathway. He became a senior fellow in Bioinformatics at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, UCSD, in 1999. Dr. Li is currently Executive Director of the National Biomedical Computation Resource (NBCR). He is actively involved in the Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA). Dr. Li's current research interests include cluster and grid computing, cyberinfrastructure, high throughput proteome annotation and virtual screening, multiscale modeling, and data mining.
Markus A. Lill, Ph.D.
Dr. Markus Lill is an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology at the School of Pharmacy, Purdue University. His research interest is the development of computational methods for drug discovery and environmental toxicology. In his current research, he focuses on protein flexibility upon ligand binding and the reliable prediction of binding affinities. The developed tools are utilized for the design of drugs as well as for predicting the toxic potential of drugs and environmental chemicals mediated by nuclear receptors and cytochrome P450 enzymes. Dr. Lill received his Diploma in Physics from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany and his Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Frankfurt, Germany. He completed two years of postdoctoral training at the Biographics Laboratory 3R in Basel, Switzerland, before being promoted to a project leader in ADMET research. In parallel, he was a reader at the Pharmacenter of the University of Basel, completing his Habilitation in 2006.
M.E. (Bette) Meek
Bette Meek manages the Existing Substances Division in the Safe Environments Programme of Health Canada. Her responsibilities relate primarily to development and implementation of process and methodology for the assessment of the effects on human health of Existing Substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. This mandate was expanded in the most recent renewal of the legislation to include a requirement to systematically set priorities for assessment and testing from among all 23,000 of the Existing Substances in Canada by September 2006.
She has considerable experience in the development of methodology for and evaluation of health-related data on environmental contaminants, acting as an advisor to several international organizations and authoring over 150 scientific publications in this area. Specific areas of experience include development of frameworks to increase transparency in the assessment of human relevance of animals' modes of action, replacement of default uncertainty factors with chemical specific data, and development of predictive exposure and hazard modelling.
Ovanes Mekenyan, Ph.D.
Dr. Ovanes Mekenyan is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of mathematical chemistry and chemical informatics. He is a Professor in the Department of Physical Chemistry, and is Head of the Laboratory of Mathematical Chemistry (LMC), at Bourgas University (Bulgaria), where he is lecturing extensively on physical chemistry and chemical reactivity. LMC has been involved in building algorithms, methods, and software for 3D modeling and 3D screening of large chemical inventories (3D Informational technology) since 1980. Dr. Mekenyan and his team have introduced molecular flexibility (4th dimension of chemical structures) and metabolic activation of chemicals in QSAR analysis and databasing. His is the leading developer of metabolic simulators for tissue (TIMES) and microbial biotransformations (CATABOL) of chemicals. The metabolic simulators were used for predicting biodegradation, bioaccumulation, genotoxicity, skin sensitization, and receptor mediated endpoints accounting for metabolic activation of chemicals. His lab developed the Centralized 3D database for all existing chemicals – conformationally multiplied and QC optimized. The database manager allows flexible searching and categorization of chemicals, accounting for their metabolic activation/deactivation. Dr. Mekenyan is the principal developer of the OASIS suite of programs for modeling properties of chemical compounds. He has published more than 170 papers and 2 books in internationally recognized journals. Dr. Mekenyan has been a Senior Visiting Scientist at the University of Wisconsin. He has been and is presently a consultant of the major industries, such as 3M, Procter and Gamble, DuPont, AstraZeneca, ExxonMobil, BASF, Unilever, Givaudan, and L'Oreal.
John S. Petterson, Ph.D.
Dr. John Petterson is President of Impact Assessment Inc., and Director of the Sequoia Foundation. He earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology at UCSD in 1979. Dr. Petterson has served as principal investigator (PI) on a number of high-profile impact assessments, including the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at both Hanford and, subsequently, at Yucca Mountain. He also served as PI for the impact assessment of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (and the American Trader, Aegean Sea, La Haven, Braer, and Selendang Ayu oil spills). Dr. Petterson has carried out social science studies following the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl (Pripyat) and Goiậnia, Brazil, and served as PI on 30 USDOI and NOAA coastal community impact studies in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and Atlantic. Recently, he has completed the NOAA preliminary socioeconomic impact assessment of Hurricane Katrina on the coastal communities of the Gulf of Mexico, the United Nations impact assessment of the causes and consequences of the impending extinction of Lake Chad (on the nations of Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad), and an analysis of the human health consequences of accelerating changes in rainfall regimes in China. These latter three studies will serve as foundation for his presentation on the nexus between global climate change and human health effects.
Stephen Proulx, Ph.D.
Dr. Stephen Proulx uses mathematical and computational approaches to model the evolution of biological systems. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Utah, where he studied the evolution of sex allocation, sexual selection, and niche breadth. Dr. Proulx's recent work focuses on the evolution of robustness and the evolution of genetic networks.
Matthew Redinbo, Ph.D.
Dr. Matthew Redinbo is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has a joint appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the UNC School of Medicine. Dr. Redinbo serves as the Director of Structural Biology for the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and is also Vice Chair of the Department of Chemistry. His research interests are in structural biology and its application to understanding dynamic cellular processes. In recent years, he has focused on DNA topoisomerases, human nuclear receptors, and drug metabolism systems. Dr. Redinbo received his B.S. in Biochemistry in 1990 from the University of California, Davis, and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from UCLA in 1995. He was awarded the Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences in 1999, and the UNC Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement in 2004.
Matthias Reuss, Ph.D.
Dr. Matthias Reuss is a professor, head of the institute of Biochemical Engineering, and acting director of the Centre of Systems Biology at the University of Stuttgart. Prior to this appointment, he was an associate professor of Biochemical Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. Dr. Reuss received his diploma in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. from the Technical University of Berlin. His research interests include the fields of systems biology, metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, 4D-spatial distribution of signal transduction processes, bioreactor modeling, enzyme technology, and drug metabolism in hepatocytes. Dr. Reuss is Fellow of the international institute of Biotechnology, London (UK). He received the research award of the State Baden-Wuerttemberg in Germany in 1992, and a Doctor Honoris Causa of the Technical University Delft (The Netherlands) in 2006.
Kenneth A. Rose, Ph.D.
Dr. Kenneth Rose is a professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University. Dr. Rose received a B.S. degree in Biology and Mathematics from the University at Albany (1979), and an M.S. (1981) and Ph.D. (1985) in Fisheries Science from the University of Washington. After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Rose was employed as an environmental consultant in the Maryland-Washington DC area, and then spent 11 years as a Research Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory before accepting his present position at Louisiana State University in 2001. Dr. Rose has published over 100 papers on a variety of aspects of ecological modeling, and the use of these models in theoretical and applied situations. Dr. Rose is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is involved with fisheries management issues in the Gulf of Mexico, the large-scale restoration efforts in the Gulf of Mexico and the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystems, and assessing fishing and other stressor effects on fish population and communities under changing climate conditions.
Philip Sayre, Ph.D.
Dr. Phil Sayre is currently the Associate Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (U.S. EPA's) Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics' (OPPT's) Risk Assessment Division (RAD). RAD has the lead responsibility for assessing the hazards and risks of high production volume industrial chemicals submitted to both the U.S. EPA's High Production Volume (HPV) Challenge Program and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) HPV program. Dr. Sayre's principal duties include serving as the division lead for nanotechnology hazard and risk issues, OECD Genomics work, and other divisional functions (including research needs identification). Prior to joining U.S. EPA, Dr. Sayre worked at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), was a visiting bench scientist working on molecular biology/microbiology at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and taught graduate classes in microbiology and waste site remediation as a visiting Professor at the Engineering School of George Washington University. Dr. Sayre holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Georgetown University (GU) (with research on microbiology and aquatic hydrocarbon toxicity done at GU and the Bermuda Biological Station) and an M.S. in Biology from Emory University. His recent publications have focused on nanotechnology risk assessment needs.
Imran Shah, Ph.D.
Dr. Imran Shah is a scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) National Center for Computational Toxicology (NCCT) where he provides leadership and guidance in the development of computational, systems-based models to support improved assessment of the public and ecological health implications of environmental stressors. Dr. Shah received a B.S. in Physics from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London, U.K., and a Ph.D. in Computational Biology from George Mason University. From 2001 to 2004, Dr. Shah was the director of the doctoral program in bioinformatics in the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver. Before joining EPA, he was employed at Icoria, a biotechnology company, where he led the development of computational systems approaches to discover biomarkers of liver toxicity from large-scale data streams. Dr. Shah is leading the NCCT Virtual Liver project, a multiscale computational model of chemical-induced chronic toxicity.
Wout Slob, Ph.D.
Dr. Wout Slob holds an M.S. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Biostatistics. He has been associated with RIVM, the National Institute of Public Health and Environment in the Netherlands, since 1986, first as a general statistical consultant, and then as a specialist in the field of risk assessment. Since 2000, he has been a part time professor in quantitative risk assessment at IRAS, Institute of Risk Assessment Sciences, which is part of the University of Utrecht. Dr. Slob's main fields of interest are dietary exposure modeling, dose-response modeling, and probabilistic risk assessment.
Roland Somogyi, Ph.D.
Dr. Roland Somogyi is President and a Founding Director (together with Dr. Larry Greller) of Biosystemix, Ltd. At Biosystemix, he has helped build discovery partnerships with public and private sector institutions for clinical outcome prediction, personalized molecular medicine, and understanding of the molecular mechanisms of disease and therapeutic response. He has been a leader in data-driven computational solutions to complex, multivariate problems for biomedical outcome modeling and signaling network inference. As a Principal Investigator at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), his group pioneered methods for large-scale expression profiling, data mining and visualization, and network reverse engineering. Dr. Somogyi has 20 years of experience in academia, government, and industry. He was Chief Scientific Officer at Molecular Mining Corporation, and has held positions at Incyte Genomics, NIH, and the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Bern. Dr. Somogyi holds a M.Sc. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Biophysics and Physiology from the University of Konstanz.
Justin Teeguarden, Ph.D.
Dr. Justin Teeguarden (DABT) is a Senior Research Scientist in the Biological Monitoring and Modeling Group at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA. Dr. Teeguarden received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and has since worked extensively in the area of physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling and risk assessment. At the National Laboratory, Dr. Teeguarden manages chemical kinetic studies, develops PBPK models for a variety of compounds, and manages a research program on nanomaterial toxicology and dosimetry that is part of a larger program developing a "systems" approach to the assessment of these new materials.
Russell Thomas, Ph.D.
Dr. Russell Thomas is an associate investigator at The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He is the Director of the Functional Genomics Research Program and the Gene Expression Core Facility. Dr. Thomas completed his Ph.D. in Toxicology at Colorado State University and performed postdoctoral research in molecular biology and genomics at the McArdle Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. In addition to the doctoral degree, he has earned a masters degree in radiation ecology and an undergraduate degree in chemistry. Prior to his current position at The Hamner, Dr. Thomas worked in bioinformatics in the biotech industry and led the genomics and toxicology groups at a biopharmaceutical company.
Raymond Tice, Ph.D.
Dr. Raymond Tice is the Deputy Director of the National Toxicology Program's (NTP) Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM) at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and coordinates the NTP High Throughput Screening (HTS) Initiative. NICEATM administers the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM); provides operational/technical support to ICCVAM; supports/organizes workshops, expert panels, and peer reviews; disseminates information; and conducts independent validation studies. One of ICCVAM's responsibilities is to review and evaluate new, revised, and alternative test methods that would reduce, refine, or replace the use of animals in regulatory testing. The purpose of the NTP HTS Initiative is to prioritize chemicals for further in-depth toxicological evaluation, identify mechanisms of action, and develop predictive models for in vivo biological response. Dr. Tice earned his Ph.D. in Biology (Human Genetics) in 1976 from Johns Hopkins University. He was employed by Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1976–1988, and by Integrated Laboratory Sciences, Inc. from 1988 to 2005, where his last position was Senior Vice President for Research & Development. He joined NIEHS in 2005. Dr. Tice served as president of the Environmental Mutagen Society and as vice president of the International Association of Environmental Mutagen Societies, has served on a number of international expert panels and committees, has edited four symposia proceedings, and published 125 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Dr. Tice is also an Editorial Board Member of Mutation Research, and Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis.
Sandor Vajda, Ph.D.
Dr. Sandor Vajda holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Gubkin Institute, Moscow, Russia, a degree in Applied Mathematics from the Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Hungarian Academy of Science. He has held faculty positions at the Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY. Dr. Vajda has held visiting positions in the Department of Engineering, University of Warwick, England, and the Department of Chemistry, Princeton University. He is currently a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and the co-director of the Biomolecular Engineering Research Center at Boston University. Since 1990, Dr. Vajda has been active in method development for modeling of biological macromolecules, with emphasis on molecular interactions and drug design. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. In 2004, Dr. Vajda and his graduate students founded SolMap Pharmaceuticals, a start-up company focusing on fragment-based drug design, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Nico van Straalen, Ph.D.
Dr. Nico van Straalen is a professor of Animal Ecology at the Free University in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He teaches Evolutionary Biology, Zoology, and Environmental Toxicology, and is head of a research group working on stress responses of invertebrate animals to temperature change and soil pollution. Dr. van Straalen's recent interest is in molecular ecology. His lab is developing genomic tools to assess contaminated soil on the basis of gene expression profiles in an indicator species of soil invertebrate.
Daniel L. Villeneuve, Ph.D.
Dr. Daniel Villeneuve earned his B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and a Ph.D. in Zoology/Environmental Toxicology from Michigan State University. After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Villeneuve served as a post-doctoral research associate at Michigan State University and Oregon State University before joining the U.S. EPA Mid-Continent Ecology Division, Duluth, Minnesota, where he is currently employed as a member of the Toxic Effects Characterization Research (TECR) branch. Dr. Villeneuve has authored or co-authored over 45 peer-reviewed publications in the field of aquatic ecotoxicology.
Jeff Waring, Ph.D.
Dr. Jeff Waring received his B.S. in Chemistry with a minor in Biology from Central Michigan University in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of Iowa. His thesis was on transcriptional regulation in the major histocompatibility complex system. He was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for postdoctoral research in Germany. Dr. Waring's postdoctoral research was done at the University of Wurzburg and at the Institute for Molecular Pharmacology in Berlin, Germany and involved studying gene regulation in hematopoetic disorders using transgenic mouse models. Dr. Waring has held a position at Abbott Laboratories in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Toxicology since 1999, where his work centers on studying and identifying gene expression changes that occur in cells during a toxic response. Such information would allow for the detection of a potential liability associated with a drug candidate at a very early stage of development.
Karen H. Watanabe, Ph.D.
Dr. Karen Watanabe received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley with a major in bioengineering. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Biomolecular Systems at Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Watanabe applies her engineering background to develop computational models of biological systems for use in risk assessment. She has published papers spanning the topics of physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling and aquatic food web bioaccumulation modeling. Her current research focuses on developing a physiologically based model of the reproductive axis in fathead minnows that will link changes at the molecular-level with larger scale reproductive effects. Since 1995, Dr. Watanabe has participated in a NATO Committee on the Challenges of a Modern Society pilot study on cancer risk assessment, and has co-authored several chapters in two monographs resulting from this activity. She is currently on the board of directors of the Pacific Northwest Chapter for the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, and is a continuing member of the national society.
Richard M. Weinshilboum, M.D.
Dr. Richard Weinshilboum received B.A. and M.D. degrees from the University of Kansas, followed by residency training in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard teaching hospital in Boston. He was also a Pharmacology Research Associate at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Dr. Julius Axelrod. Dr. Weinshilboum began his affiliation with the Mayo Medical School and Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in 1972 where he is presently Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and Internal Medicine and Mary Lou and John H. Dasburg Professor in Cancer Genomics Research. Dr. Weinshilboum's research has focused on pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics, and he has authored over 280 scientific manuscripts which address these topics. His major area of investigation has been the pharmacogenetics of drug metabolism, with a focus on methylation and sulfation. Dr. Weinshilboum has been the recipient of many awards and honors including an Established Investigatorship of the American Heart Association, a Burroughs Wellcome Scholar Award in Clinical Pharmacology, the Oscar B. Hunter Award of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, the Harry Gold Award of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the Catecholamine Club Julius Axelrod medal, the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration William B. Abrams Lectureship Award, and the Millennium Pharmaceutical "Innovators in Medicine" Award.
John N. Weinstein, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. John Weinstein obtained a B.A. in Biology at Harvard College, and an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Biophysics at Harvard University. His more than 240 publications include 10 as first author in Science and four in the last decade that have been cited in the literature more than 400 times each. He gives 30 to 40 invited lectures a year nationally and internationally and was recently nominated for the Medal of Technology as a pioneer of the "post-genomic era" in biomedical science. After an internship and residency in Medicine at Stanford, he joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he currently heads the Genomics & Bioinformatics Group (GBG) in the National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology. He is a Captain (retired), U.S. Public Health Service. He founded and heads the NCI Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, and Computational Biology Faculty, as well as two NIH Special Interest Groups.
Since 1992, Dr. Weinstein has applied a mix of genomic, proteomic, bioinformatic, and computational chemistry tools to the pursuit of new biomarkers, new prevention strategies, and new therapies for cancer. His research program (for which he has coined the term 'integromic™') is half experimental, half computational.
Matthew Wheeler
Matthew Wheeler received an M.S. degree in Statistics and a B.S. in Computer Science and Systems Analysis, both from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is a member of the Risk Evaluation Branch at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mr. Wheeler's current interests include model uncertainty, Bayesian computational methods, risk estimation, and computational statistics.
Chihae Yang, Ph.D.
Dr. Chihae Yang, Vice President of Toxicology and Predictive Modeling, joined Leadscope, Inc. in 2000 from her position as a tenured chemistry professor at Otterbein College and adjunct professor at the Ohio State University. She brings 25 years of experience in computational chemistry applied to lipid membranes, colloidal systems, and polymeric materials. At the Clorox Company, she invented and successfully commercialized innovative polymeric films to national market, leading a team of product development chemists and engineers. She also has served as a consultant in statistical design and analysis, and currently teaches at the Ohio State University in statistical design and molecular informatics. Dr. Yang received her B.S. from Seoul National University and her Ph.D. from the Ohio State University.