Eleventh Annual
New and Reemerging
Infectious Diseases Conference
Thursday, April 17, and Friday, April 18, 2008
College of Veterinary Medicine
Large Animal Clinic Auditorium
Conference Speakers
Kavita M. Berger, PhD
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy
Kavita M. Berger nee Marfatia is a senior program associate at the Center for Science, Technology, and Security Policy. She is also an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in their Science, Technology, and International Affairs program.
She received her BS in molecular genetics from The Ohio State University. There she worked on projects related to osteoporosis and cancer for her undergraduate honors thesis. She obtained her PhD in molecular genetics and molecular biology at Emory University.
Following graduate school, she changed the focus of her research and did her postdoctoral work on HIV microbicides, HIV and smallpox vaccines, and immunologist characterization of the human cervix.
Kavita will discuss current trends in biodefense and public health policy. The subject of biosecurity is so diverse and covers so many fields, she will attempt to give an overview of US government and non-governmental organization activities in all relevant areas of biodefense.
David S. Blehert, PhD
United States Geological Survey,
National Wildlife Health Center
David Blehert has been the PI of the US Geological Survey, National Wildlife Health Center Diagnostic Microbiology Laboratory since 2003. Prior to that, he earned his BS in biology from the University of Minnesota in 1993 and a PhD in bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1999. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, where he studied the role of autoinducer-2 in interspecies bacterial interactions within human oral biofilms (dental plaque).
In addition to his role as head of the diagnostic microbiology laboratory, David's current research includes using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis to define the epidemiology of avian cholera outbreaks among North American waterfowl, studying the impacts of contaminants (PCBs, cadmium, and flame retardants) on the pathogen resistance (immunocompetence) of Northern leopard frogs, and investigating the role of exotic species in the recent proliferation of type E botulism outbreaks among wild birds of the Great Lakes region.
Gregory D. Bossart, VMD, PhD
Florida Atlantic University, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution
Gregory Bossart has spent the last 28 years working in clinical domestic, marine mammal, and avian medicine and wildlife pathology on a national and international basis. He has over 95 publications focused primarily on the pathologic basis of disease in wild animals.
His undergraduate degrees in biology and physical geography are from the University of Pittsburgh. He received his doctorate in veterinary medicine from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1981-1985, he was a comparative pathology resident and NIH fellow in the Department of Pathology at the University of Miami School of Medicine. In 1995, he completed his PhD in immunology at Florida International University.
He has been in private veterinary practice and presently is a clinical veterinary consultant at facilities in the US, Latin America, and Asia. Since 1981, he has been the medical director at the Falcon Batchelor Bird of Prey Center at the Miami Museum of Science. Presently, he is senior scientists, chief marine mammal veterinarian, and head of pathology at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Ft. Pierce, Fla.
He is an adjunct professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Miami School of Medicine, affiliate professor at Florida Atlantic University, and on the graduate faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina.
His recent published research has documented resurging and emerging diseases in manatees, whales, dolphins, and birds. He has helped characterize the first viral disease in manatees, and was responsible for developing the first immunohistochemical technique for diagnosing brevetoxicosis in marine mammals and birds.
Garry T. Cole, PhD
University of Texas at San Antonio, South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases
Garry Cole is a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio and hold the Margaret Batts Tobin Endowed Chair in Medical Mycology. He moved to San Antonio in November, 2005 from the Medical College of Ohio, where he had spent ten years as the chairman of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. Prior to this appointment, he was a faculty member in the Department of Botany at the University of Texas at Austin from 1970-1995.
Dr. Cole completed his PhD at the University of Waterloo in Canada, followed by postdoctoral training in cell biology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. During his early tenure at UT Austin, his research was focused on ultrastructural and morphogenetic studies of filamentous fungi. After a sabbatical year at Gifu medical School in Japan in 1977, his research focus shifted to medical mycology with emphasis on studies of the pathogenesis of Coccidioides, a soil-borne respiratory pathogen of humans found in the southwestern United States from West Texas to southern California. More recently, his investigations include the development of a vaccine against coccidioidomycosis (San Joaquin Valley fever). Dr. Cole has published 181 research papers, co-authored four books, and holds or has filed five US patents in the areas of fungal biology and medical mycology. His research program is currently funded by two RO1 grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Vanessa O. Ezenwa, PhD
University of Montana, Missoula
Biography to come.
David A. Jessup, DVM
California Department of Fish and Game, Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center
Dr. Jessup is the senior wildlife veterinarian/supervisor, a capacity in which he supervises the operations, research, and service activities of the Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center of the California Department of Fish and Game. This facility responds to oil spills and other marine emergencies, does field research on free-ranging sea otters and other sensititve marine species, has a full service marine animal pathology program, and houses several captive sea otters that are trained for for physiology research. Dave also has years of experience working with terrestrial species like elk, antelope, bighorn sheep, deer, bear, mountain lion, waterfowl, and endangered species. He has also worked on wildlife in Mexico, India, and several African countries.
Dr. Jessup received his DVM from Washington State University, his MPVM from University of California, Davis, and is a Diplomate of the American College of Zoological Medicine. He has authored over 230 scientific and popular publications, book chapters, letters, or monographs, of which approximately 100 were as first or only author and approximately 70 percent were peer reviewed.
W. Ian Lipkin, MD
Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons
W. Ian Lipkin is the director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, John Snow Professor of Epidemiology, and professor of neurology and pathology in the Mailman School of Public Health and College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is the scientific director and primary investigator of the Northeast Biodefense Center, the Regional Center of Excellence in Emerging Infectious Diseases Research comprising 28 private and public academic and public health institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. he is the principal investigator of the Autism Birth Cohort, a unique international program that investigates the epidemiology and basis of neurodevelopmental disorders through analyses of prospective birth cohort of 100,000 children and their parents. Dr. Lipkin also direct the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Diagnostics in Zoonotic and Emerging Infectious Diseases.
In 1989, Dr. Lipkin was the first to identify a microbe (Bornavirus) using purely molecular tools. In 1999, he led the team that identified the West Nile virus in brains of encephalitis victims in New York State. In April 2003 he sequenced a portion of the SARS virus directly from lung tissue, established a sensitive assay for infection, hand carried 10,000 test kits to Beijing at the height of the outbreak, and was named special advisor to China for research and international cooperation in infectious diseases. He is the honorary director of the Beijing Infectious Disease Center, and serves on the scientific advisory board of the Institut Pasteur de Shanghai, the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Center for Emerging Infectious Disease, the Guangzhou Institute for Biomedicine and health, the Consortium for Conservation medicine, the Doris Duke Foundation, Tetragenetics, and 454 Life Sciences Corporation.
Dr. Lipkin received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 1974 where he studied cultural anthropology, philosophy, and literature; and an MD from Rush medical College in 1978. His postgraduate training included a clerkship at the Queen Square Institute of Neurology in London; an internship in medicine at the University of Pittsburgh; a residency in internal medicine at the University of Washington; a residency in neurology at the University of California, San Francisco; and a fellowship at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. Dr. Lipkin is board certified by both the American Board of Internal medicine and the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry.
Juan J. Martinez, PhD
The University of Chicago, Department of Microbiology
Juan martinez received his BS in microbiology with honors distinction from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he served as an undergraduate research assistant in the Departments of Microbiology and Veterinary Pathobiology. He then enrolled in the graduate training program in microbial pathogenesis in the Department of Microbiology at Washington University, where he studied mechanism by which type-1 piliated uropathogenic E.coli (UPEC) bind to and enter into normally non-phagocytic bladder cells. These studies led to the identification of a fimbral tip protein, FimH, as necessary and sufficient in leading to bacterial uptake as well as the characterization of host proteins involved in the uptake process. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and was awarded fellowships from the EMBO, INSERM, and INRA to begin characterizing pathogenic mechanisms of the obligate intracellular tick-borne pathogen, Rickettsia conorii, the causative agent of mediterranean spotted fever (MSF).
He is now an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology at The University of Chicago, where his research interests related to the specific adherence to the target cells as a critical step in the establishment of many successful bacterial infections in mammalian hosts.
Teresa N. Quitugua, PhD
National Biosurveillance Integration Center
Office of Health Affairs,
Department of Homeland Security
Biography to come.