CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY - Key Persons
Mr. Resnick is a DrPH student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a health security and emergency preparedness professional and the incoming director of biocontainment unit services for MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, a federally designated Regional Emerging Special Pathogens Treatment Center. He has most recently consulted for the National Academy of Medicine's Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Disasters and Emergencies and the University of Nebraska Medical Center's Global Center for Health Security. He currently serves as a mass gatherings consultant to the World Health Organization's Border Health and Mass Gatherings Unit.
Aaron previously served as the planning and preparedness manager for the Northwest Healthcare Response Network, the healthcare emergency preparedness coalition for Western Washington State, where his responsibilities included managing regional and statewide projects such as healthcare infectious disease sustainment and hospital surge capacity. During the COVID-19 pandemic response, Aaron served in multiple roles including as coalition operations section chief and the first healthcare liaison to the Washington State Department of Health incident management team. Prior to his coalition role, Aaron was the emergency preparedness coordinator at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, VA, a Level I Trauma and Pediatric Center and Northern Virginia's largest hospital.
Aaron has presented at state, regional, and national conferences on topics ranging from infectious disease preparedness to hospital capacity challenges. He was a 2018 Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative Fellow with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. He holds a BA in diplomacy and world affairs from Occidental College in Los Angeles and an MA in war studies from King's College London.
Job Titles:
- Analyst
- Research Associate
- Analyst, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Ms. Nagar is an Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her primary research interests include global health security, public health systems strengthening, and centering equity, inclusion, and community resilience in health security discourse.
At the Center, Ms. Nagar is supporting efforts to establish a nongovernmental policy center in the Asian region to advance national, regional, and international health security goals, including those that will improve prevention, detection, response, and recovery from pandemics and other catastrophic infectious disease emergencies in the region and beyond. Before joining the Center, her work focused on integrating gender equity and social inclusion into various global health and international development projects. Her projects addressed complex global public health issues such as gender-based violence, menstrual health and hygiene, water and sanitation, child marriage, sexual and reproductive health, and more. She also has provided global health consulting services for organizations like UNICEF, Save the Children, and academic institutions.
Ms. Nagar received her MPH degree with a specialization in global health from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. During her graduate studies, she used quantitative and qualitative research methods to study maternal and child undernutrition in Haiti and contributed to The Lancet series on Gender Equality, Norms, and Health. Ms. Nagar earned a BS in biology with minors in religion and philosophy from Wake Forest University, where she engaged in life sciences research and, after graduating, helped establish the locus for 3 new undergraduate academic programs at the university: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BMB), Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery, and Engineering.
Job Titles:
- Analyst
- Research Associate
- Analyst / Professional Profile
- Analyst at the Johns Hopkins
Alex Zhu is an Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their primary interests include global health security, global health equity, pandemic prevention and preparedness, and global catastrophic biological risks. At the Center, Alex supports various project efforts, including improving indoor air quality, contributing to health emergency communications research, and protecting critical infrastructure from the next pandemic.
Alex earned an MSPH in global disease epidemiology and control from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their thesis focused on identifying factors associated with developing opportunistic infections in people living with HIV in Lusaka, Zambia. Alex was a Summer Research Fellow with the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative and focused on the Biological Weapons Convention. Alex earned a BS in neuroscience and a minor in comparative history of ideas from the University of Washington, Seattle. As an undergraduate, they worked in a pathology lab researching genes associated with the development of Alzheimer's-related proteins in fruit flies.
Previously, Alex worked at Epic Systems on EDI project management, technical support, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In addition to their work at the Center, Alex writes poetry.
Expertise
Global health security
Global health equity
Pandemic prevention and preparedness
Global catastrophic biological risks
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Senior Analyst
- Senior Analyst, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Mr. Linder is a Senior Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His primary research interests include biosafety, biosecurity, data management and analysis, foreign policy related to emerging threats, and crisis management in the health and security domains.
At the Center, Mr. Linder serves as technical lead on projects aimed at developing zoonotic disease preparedness capacities, updating and implementing the International Health Regulations (IHR), and strengthening biosecurity and biosafety measures in Middle East/North Africa and Southeast Asia. Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Linder served as a Junior Scientist at the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security, where he acted as a subject matter expert on multiple government-funded awards related to biosecurity and provided expertise and logistical support for various grants and programs focused on health security infrastructure, biological and chemical incident response, and compliance with IHR monitoring and evaluation.
Mr. Linder earned a Master of Science in biohazardous threat agents and emerging infectious diseases from Georgetown University, and he is pursuing a Master of Arts in security studies from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown.
Expertise
Health Security
Biosecurity
Biosafety
International Security Policy
Zoonotic Diseases
Data Management and Analysis
Crisis Management
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Phelan is an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Dr. Phelan is a globally recognized expert in global health law, with expertise in international law and infectious diseases and the impact of global change events on health, including planetary health issues such as biodiversity and climate change. She/they advises international organizations, international institutions, and governments on pandemic preparedness and response, and has served on several national and international advisory bodies, including for the World Health Organization and the US National Academies. Dr. Phelan has been recognized as a Woman of Influence by the Australian Financial Review and was appointed as an Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society for advocacy work during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Dr. Woodward recently completed her DrPH in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her doctoral work focused on the role of public health policy in building and sustaining contact tracing programs in the US.
Prior to and during her doctoral studies, Dr. Woodward worked for the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance (GEIS) program within the US Department of Defense (DoD), where she facilitated the communication and use of global infectious disease surveillance data to protect the health of DoD personnel and support broader global health security. More recently, Dr. Woodward has been working with The Pew Charitable Trusts to improve the exchange of public health data between healthcare providers and public health agencies. She holds an MPH in infectious disease epidemiology from Columbia University and a BA in political science, public health, and French from the University of Rochester.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Senior Editor / Writer at the Johns Hopkins
Ms. Browett is a Senior Editor/Writer at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She serves as Editor of the Center's semi-weekly COVID-19 Situation Report and occasional Outbreak Alerts, including those on monkeypox. She provides timely, concise, and accurate information on critically important global health topics.
Prior to joining the Center in February 2022, Ms. Browett worked for 10 years as the Managing Editor of the Kaiser Family Foundation's Daily Global Health Policy Report. As an independent consultant, she focused on writing, editing, and aggregating technical content for a wide variety of clients in the health, outdoor recreation, and conservation disciplines.
Ms. Browett has an MPH in international health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she also earned a certificate in health communication. She earned a BA in international health care policy from Davidson College.
Job Titles:
- Managing Senior Analyst at the Johns Hopkins
- Managing Senior Analyst, Research Associate
- Managing Senior Analyst, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Ms. Kobokovich is the Managing Senior Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Ms. Kobokovich also is the Program Director for the Center's Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI) Fellowship. Her primary interests include global health security, emerging diagnostics and biotechnologies, and pandemic preparedness. She is particularly interested in the applications of laboratory science to enhance preparedness and response efforts in large-scale disease outbreaks.
Ms. Kobokovich's work during the COVID-19 pandemic has included extensive research on antibody and molecular testing to contextualize their respective uses and operating profiles for policymakers and the broader public. She also worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) Novel Coronavirus-19 Mass Gatherings Expert Group to support the development of the mass gathering indicator for the WHO COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response (SPRP) Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.
In 2018, Ms. Kobokovich received an MPH in epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. While at Emory, she participated in a yearlong internship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Parasitic Diseases branch. Her thesis focused on genetic markers of anthelmintic resistance in soil-transmitted helminths associated with current mass deworming protocols used in soil-transmitted helminth-endemic areas. She also assisted in developing a novel genomic assay to identify resistance genes in 2 helminths with high rates of morbidity among underserved populations.
Ms. Kobokovich earned a BS in biology from Bucknell University in 2016. As a student, she worked in the molecular virology laboratory to enhance current understanding of colony collapse disorder in honeybee populations worldwide.
Job Titles:
- Associate Editor of the Journal Health Security
- Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America
- Member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association
Dr. Adalja is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and an Affiliate of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. His work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity.
Dr. Adalja has served on US government panels tasked with developing guidelines for the treatment of plague, botulism, and anthrax in mass casualty settings, the system of care for infectious disease emergencies, and a National Academies steering committee for diagnostic excellence. He also served as an external advisor to the New York City Health + Hospitals Emergency Management Highly Infectious Disease training program and on a US Federal Emergency Management Agency working group on nuclear disaster recovery. He is a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America; he previously served on their public health and diagnostics committees and their precision medicine working group. Dr. Adalja is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians Pennsylvania Chapter's EMS & Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness Committee as well as the Allegheny County Medical Reserve Corps. He was formerly a member of the National Quality Forum Infectious Disease Standing Committee; he currently serves on their Primary Care and Chronic Illness Standing Committee, and the US Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System, with which he was deployed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and was also selected for their mobile acute care strike team. Dr. Adalja's expertise is frequently sought by international and national media.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Adalja has served as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association coronavirus advisory group; a consultant to various businesses, schools, and organizations; and an informal advisor to the International Monetary Fund. He has also testified before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Pennsylvania House Health Committee.
Dr. Adalja is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security. He was a coeditor of the volume Global Catastrophic Biological Risks and a contributing author for the Handbook of Bioterrorism and Disaster Medicine, the Emergency Medicine CorePendium, Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple, UpToDate's section on biological terrorism, and a North Atlantic Treaty Organization volume on bioterrorism. He has also published in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Annals of Emergency Medicine, and Health Security.
Dr. Adalja is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American College of Physicians, and the American College of Emergency Physicians. He is a member of various medical societies, including the American Medical Association, the HIV Medicine Association, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. He is a board-certified physician in internal medicine, emergency medicine, infectious diseases, and critical care medicine.
Dr. Adalja completed 2 fellowships at the University of Pittsburgh-one in infectious diseases, for which he served as chief fellow, and one in critical care medicine. Prior to that he completed a combined residency in internal medicine and emergency medicine at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he served as chief resident and as a member of the infection control committee. He was a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine from 2010 through 2017 and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor there. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University.
He received an MD from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine(link is external) and a BS in industrial management from Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr. Adalja is a native of Butler, Pennsylvania, and actively practices infectious disease, critical care, and emergency medicine in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, where he was appointed to the City of Pittsburgh's HIV Commission and the advisory group of AIDS Free Pittsburgh.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Director of Events at the Johns Hopkins
Ms. Lapp is Director of Events at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She manages the logistical planning for all the Center's events both domestically and internationally. Prior to joining the Center in 2000, she planned events for multiple organizations in Washington, DC.
She has a BBA from George Washington University in international business.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director
- Deputy Director / Professional Profile
- Deputy Director at the Johns Hopkins
Ms. Cicero is Deputy Director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Senior Scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a lawyer with 30 years of experience. At the Center, Ms. Cicero helps to lead strategic planning, program development, budgeting, and health security policy development. She is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security, the leading peer-reviewed journal in this field.
Ms. Cicero greatly expanded the Center's efforts in epidemic preparedness policy, global catastrophic biological risk issues, and international programs to engage constructively with other countries and regions in collaborative efforts to address biosecurity threats. Ms. Cicero has launched a number of initiatives to improve mutual understanding of health security issues with countries including India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, and the People's Republic of China. She has also worked on projects to assess and improve Taiwan's preparedness for public health emergencies.
Ms. Cicero has authored or co-authored several widely cited articles and reports on biosecurity policy, pandemic preparedness, biosurveillance, biosecurity in the South-East Asian region, public health measures required during pandemics, and international disease surveillance. She serves as Chair of a WHO Working Group on Dual Use Research of Concern, and she chairs a WHO Working Group tasked with developing recommendations for a governance framework for advanced life science research.
Before joining the Center, Ms. Cicero spent nearly two decades as a practicing attorney in both the US federal government and the private sector. She was Managing Partner in charge of the Washington, DC, office of Drinker, Biddle & Reath, LLP, where she was responsible for more than 300 lawyers and staff. In her legal work, she created and managed pharmaceutical industry consortia, with a particular focus on clinical research, patient privacy, and medical countermeasure development. She served as legal counsel to the Alliance for Biosecurity as well as the International Pharmaceutical Aerosols Consortium. Her work required constructive engagement with members of Congress; the World Health Organization; the European Commission; the Food and Drug Administration; the US Departments of State, Defense, and Health and Human Services; and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Before entering private practice, Ms. Cicero was an environmental litigator. She began her career as a trial attorney in the Honors Program at the US Department of Justice, Environmental Enforcement Section. Ms. Cicero is a graduate of the Yale Law School and Oberlin College.
Ms. Sundelson is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests pertain to health security in the context of the former Soviet Union. She is particularly interested in Russian state-sponsored disinformation about biological weapons.
Prior to starting her doctoral studies, Ms. Sundelson was a research assistant at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, where she worked on an NIH-funded study of HIV-related risk behavior among men who have sex with men in the US. She has professional working proficiency in Russian and spent a year abroad in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where she interned at a local cardiology clinic.
Ms. Sundelson received an MSc in reproductive and sexual health research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and a BA in Russian language and literature from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- Fellow at the Johns Hopkins
Ms. Attal-Juncqua is a Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Her primary interests include pandemic preparedness, biosecurity, emerging biotechnologies, biodefense, and biological weapons nonproliferation policy.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Senior Analyst
- Senior Analyst, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Mr. Wakefield is a Senior Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His primary research interests include biosecurity, health emergency preparedness and response, civil-military relations, the biological and chemical aspects of CBRN non-proliferation, and preparedness and response to deliberate events.
Mr. Wakefield's work at the Center focuses on international biological security issues and understanding, developing, and improving health emergency preparedness for natural, accidental, and deliberate events. This includes working with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other partners to develop and implement best practice for civil-military collaboration as part of health emergency preparedness, as well as newly developing work related to deliberate biological events.
Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Wakefield spent five years at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London, United Kingdom, where he was a Research Fellow in the Global Health Programme. His work at Chatham House was at the intersection of public health and national security and focused on biosecurity and health security. This involved working closely with policymakers and practitioners to bridge the gap between research, policy, and practice. He has experience working in Nigeria and Ghana and has worked directly with the WHO, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), the Africa Centres for Disease Control (Africa CDC), the Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction (GP), and several other governmental and nongovernmental health and security actors across Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Canada, the US, the UK, and others.
Mr. Wakefield co-authored the Chatham House Sustainable Laboratories Prior Assessment Tool(link is external) as part of a long-term biosecurity project on improving the sustainability of laboratories in low-resource settings and worked with the GP and UK Government Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office at Wilton Park on mitigating deliberate biological threats. Mr. Wakefield also ran awareness-raising courses on biological threats and bioterrorism in Morocco, lectured on biological threats and health emergencies in the Chatham House Summer School, and contributed to the ongoing revision of the 2004 Public Health Response to Biological and Chemical Weapons: WHO Guidance.
Mr. Wakefield was an Emerging Leader in Biosecurity (ELBI) Fellow at Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security in 2020 and 2021, a 2020 OSCE-UNODA Peace and Security Scholar, and an associate member of the Global Violence Prevention special interest group at the Faculty of Public Health, UK. He has a multidisciplinary background in international relations and holds an MSc in security studies from the Department of Political Science, School of Public Policy, at University College, London. His thesis focused on the indirect relationship between infectious disease and civil conflict, analyzing how infectious disease outbreaks impact the social, economic, and political drivers of conflict. He also holds a BA (Hons) in international relations from Loughborough University and a Diploma of international studies from the University of Technology, Sydney.
Mr. Wakefield is primarily based in London, UK, but spends time in the US in Baltimore, MD, and Washington, DC.
Dr. Ajong is a DrPH student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A physician by training, he is passionate about strengthening emergency preparedness and response to epidemic- and pandemic-prone diseases in fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCAS). Dr. Ajong is currently an epidemiologist with the Acute Events Epidemiology team of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. Having occupied clinician and humanitarian roles at the Red Cross, Medair, IOM, and now WHO, he has contributed to the public health responses for several disease outbreaks, including Ebola, cholera, measles, mpox, and COVID-19. He has field experience in FCAS in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically Cameroon, South Sudan, and Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Dr. Ajong holds an MPH from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an MD from the University of Buea.
Job Titles:
- Communications Director
- Support Staff Member
- Communications Director of the Johns Hopkins
Dr. Giray is the Communications Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, where she oversees strategic communications, public relations, and media activities. In collaboration with the Center team, Dr. Giray helps to promote the Center's brand voice and commitment to protecting people's health.
Prior to joining the Center, Dr. Giray worked at the global communications agency Weber Shandwick, where she supported integrated media, high-profile events, and thought leadership for nonprofit to Fortune 500 companies in the healthcare, social impact, and sustainability sectors.
Previously, Dr. Giray served as the Director of Communications of Research-to-Policy Collaboration at Penn State University. In this capacity, she led policy communication and outreach efforts, connecting the scientific community and federal and state government stakeholders and coordinating numerous congressional briefings and roundtables.
Concurrently, Dr. Giray was a consultant with the World Bank Group, providing input for social development, health, and governance projects. Dr. Giray has authored and coauthored peer-reviewed publications, policy reports, and briefs on science communication, global health, globalization, and cross-cultural psychology.
Dr. Giray earned her PhD and MS in human development and family studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and BS in psychology from Bilkent University.
Dr. Rivers is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is an epidemiologist specializing in preparedness and response for epidemics, pandemics, and deliberately occurring events. Dr. Rivers recently returned from an appointment as founding associate director of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Dr. Rivers has testified in front of the United States Congress on several occasions and is a frequent advisor to senior leaders at the state and federal levels. She served on the Biden-Harris Presidential Transition Team working on COVID-19 policies. Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Rivers participated as author or contributor in influential reports that are guiding the US pandemic response, including National Coronavirus Response: A Roadmap to Reopening(link is external) and Public Health Principles for a Phased Reopening During COVID-19: Guidance for Governors, the latter of which was used by the National Governors Association, the state of Maryland, and Washington, DC, to guide reopening plans.
Prior to joining the Center in 2017, Dr. Rivers worked as an epidemiologist for the US Army Public Health Center as a Department of Defense Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation Scholar. She also participated in a National Science and Technology Council Pandemic Prediction and Forecasting Science and Technology working group. Dr. Rivers serves as an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security.
Dr. Rivers has been awarded the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Faculty Award for Excellence in US Public Health Practice; the Department of the Army Achievement Medal for Civilian Service; and a Department of Defense Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Research Transformation Scholarship. In 2015, she earned a PhD in genetics, bioinformatics, and computational biology from Virginia Tech. Her doctoral research focused on computational epidemiology, specifically modeling emerging infectious diseases such as avian influenza A (H7N9), Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and Ebola virus disease for public health support using nontraditional, publicly available sources of data. Dr. Rivers received an MPH with a concentration in infectious disease from Virginia Tech in 2013 and a BA in anthropology from the University of New Hampshire in 2011.
Ms. Walker is a doctoral student in Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Caitlin worked as a Senior Health Analyst for the UK Health Security Agency. Previously, she has worked with Public Health England and interned with the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
Ms. Walker holds a BA in biological natural sciences from the University of Cambridge.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Senior Analyst
- Senior Analyst, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Ms. Potter is a Senior Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her primary research interests include analysis of outbreak preparedness and response in domestic and international contexts, unique qualitative methodological approaches, and the intersection between health systems strengthening and health security.
At the Center, part of Ms. Potter's work focuses on the response to COVID-19, including contributing to 6 high-impact reports related to contact tracing, school-based measures, vaccine allocation, and overall reopening guidance. Additionally, Ms. Potter recently led an analysis of US state and local public health laboratories' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, and she contributes to the Center's COVID-19 Situation Report.
Outside of COVID-19, Ms. Potter is involved in various efforts describing and characterizing health security threats and responses. Ms. Potter developed a novel mixed-methods approach for a recent study to better understand assurance, verification, and related concepts to increase the degree of certainty that States Parties are meeting their Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) obligations and supporting BWC implementation. Ms. Potter also contributed to research examining last-mile challenges in vaccine delivery, post-epidemic routine immunization recovery, and vaccination equity in resource-constrained settings. Additionally, Ms. Potter has contributed to awareness-raising and communications efforts such as project-related social media awareness campaigns, monkeypox outbreak alerts and fact sheets, as well as "Outbreak Thursday" blog posts for the Outbreak Observatory. Ms. Potter also represents the Center at scientific meetings, presenting her work in various capacities (i.e., poster presenter, workshop leader, plenary speaker).
Currently, Ms. Potter contributes to various projects, including the development of indicators to measure holistic pandemic recovery in US communities and the design of an online tool to aid policymakers in nonpharmaceutical intervention (NPI) implementation. In her free time, Ms. Potter volunteers her outreach and analysis expertise and services to the Greene Care Clinic, a free clinic in Greene County, Virginia.
Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Potter received her MSPH degree in global disease epidemiology and control from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. During her studies, Ms. Potter completed her practicum and capstone with the Center for Health Security, conducting an evaluation of Uganda's Ebola preparedness and response measures(link is external) using a novel methodology created for the project and analyzing rationale for past public health emergency of international concern declarations(link is external) . Additionally, Ms. Potter served as a research assistant for the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for a scoping literature review regarding the conceptualization and use of political will on behalf of vulnerable populations. While at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, she also earned a certificate in humanitarian health.
Ms. Potter has a BS in cell and molecular biology with a minor in global health from Northeastern University. During this period, Ms. Potter completed an internship at Sanofi Pasteur, assisting with vaccine development for respiratory syncytial virus, and an internship with the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine, conducting qualitative research and surveillance activities for typhoid fever.
Mr. Minks is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Senior Biothreat Reduction Specialist for Noblis, supporting health security work for the US government. Previously, Mr. Minks was an Emergency Management Program Manager for SSM Health, helping lead the hospital system's response to COVID-19. Additionally, he served as the regional public health emergency planner, where he led planning efforts for the CDC's Cities Readiness Initiative in the St. Louis, Missouri, metropolitan area. Mr. Minks is a member of the 2019 cohort of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security's Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI). Mr. Minks' research interest focuses on US readiness for events of agroterrorism.
Mr. Minks earned a Bachelor of Science in environmental science from Southeast Missouri State University, a Master of Public Health in veterinary public health from the University of Missouri, and a Master of Arts in security studies from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Colonel Murphy is pursuing a DrPH in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (BSPH). She currently is the Safety and Compliance Division Director for Advanced Test Reactor Programs at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). In 2020, she retired from her final US Air Force assignment as Deputy Command Surgeon for the United States Africa Command.
During her Air Force career, Colonel Murphy commanded a medical squadron (multi-practice clinic) and a medical group (hospital) and served as the 7th Air Force Surgeon General during the Korean MERS epidemic and a political crisis involving potentially viable anthrax samples. She was the Global Synchronization Branch Chief at the United States Strategic Command's Center for Combating WMD, and during a different assignment, she served as administrator for the elite Air Force Radiation Assessment Team. She is a Certified Industrial Hygienist.
Colonel Murphy is a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Academy, where she received a BS in biology. She obtained an MS in zoology from Arizona State University.
Job Titles:
- National Security Advisor
- Retired
Colonel Randall Larsen, USAF (Ret) is the national security advisor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.
He formerly served as a professor and department chair at the National War College, the founding director of the Institute for Homeland Security, the executive director of the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, and along with former Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent founded the Bipartisan WMD Terrorism Research Center where he served as the chief executive officer until December 2011.
Larsen is the author of Our Own Worst Enemy: Asking the Right Questions About Security to Protect You, Your Family, and America (Warner Books, 2007), AVOIDING THE ABYSS: Progress, Shortfalls, and the Way Ahead in Combating the WMD Threat (Air War College, 2005), What Corporate America Needs to Know About Bioterrorism (National Legal Center, 2003), and The Executive's Desk Book on Corporate Risks and Response for Homeland Security (National Legal Center, 2003). His op-eds and commentaries have been published in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today, New York Post, DomPrep, and the Ripon Forum.
He retired as an Air Force Colonel in July 2000 after serving in both the Army and Air Force for a combined total of 32 years of active duty military service. His flying career began as a 19-year old Cobra pilot in the 101st Airborne Division. He flew 400 combat missions in Vietnam. He also served as military attaché at the US Embassy in Bangkok, the chief of legislative liaison at the US Transportation Command, and the commander of America's fleet of VIP aircraft at Andrews AFB MD. His decorations include the Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, 17 awards of the Air Medal (3 with "V" Device for Valor), and the South Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.
Dr. Watson is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on public health risk assessment, crisis and risk-based decision making, public health and healthcare preparedness and response, biodefense, and emerging infectious disease preparedness and response. She is currently focused on the US and international response to COVID-19.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Watson has led or coauthored a series of influential reports related to contact tracing, reopening businesses, and the US criminal justice system. She has produced and contributed to a series of risk assessments on the topics of mass gatherings, business reopening, and university operations during COVID-19. Dr. Watson is also working with the World Health Organization to understand and estimate COVID-19 burden of disease around the world.
From 2012 to 2013, Dr. Watson served as Program Manager for the Integrated CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear] Terrorism Risk Assessment program of the US Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate.
Since joining the Center in 2004, Dr. Watson has led a variety of projects and authored many peer-reviewed articles and reports, including articles on biological threat characterization; risk assessment; federal decontamination plans for a wide-area biological attack; federal, state, and local medical response to Hurricane Katrina; and the National Hospital Preparedness Program. Her work also focuses on supporting national and global health security. She was a member of the Center's joint external evaluation team that conducted an assessment of Taiwan's capacities and capabilities under the World Health Organization International Health Regulations. Dr. Watson also serves as an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security.
Dr. Watson earned a DrPH in Health Policy and Management in 2017 and an MPH in 2009, both from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She earned a BA in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology in 2004 from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Dr. Henderson was a Distinguished Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Professor of Public Health and Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He was Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a Founding Director (1998) of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. From November 2001 through April 2003, he served as the Director of the Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and, later, as a Principal Science Advisor in the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Henderson's previous positions include: Associate Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President (1990-93); Dean of the Faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (1977-90); Director of the World Health Organization's global smallpox eradication campaign (1966-77); and Chief of the Surveillance Section of the Epidemiology Branch of the Centers for Disease Control (1961-66).
In 2002, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. In 2015, he was awarded Taiwan's Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health, and in 2013 he was presented with the Order of the Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon, the highest civilian honor awarded by the Republic of China (Taiwan). He was the recipient of the National Medal of Science, the National Academy of Sciences' Public Welfare Medal, and the Japan Prize. He received honorary degrees from 17 universities and special awards from 19 countries.
Dr. Henderson was a member of the Institute of Medicine, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a Fellow of a number of professional medical and public health societies.
Dr. Henderson served as Editor Emeritus of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security(link is external) (formerly Biosecurity and Bioterrorism(link is external) ). Additionally, he authored more than 200 articles and scientific papers and 31 book chapters and was coauthor of the renowned Smallpox and Its Eradication (Fenner F, Henderson DA, Arita I, Jezek A, and Ladnyi ID. Geneva: World Health Organization; 1988), the authoritative history of the disease and its ultimate demise.
Job Titles:
- Chief of Staff
- Chief of Staff at the Johns Hopkins
Ms. Sandiford is the Chief of Staff at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She collaborates with investigators, analysts, and administrators across the Center and liaises with partner organizations on the development and execution of project plans by aligning technical aims of projects with the Center's experts, its mission, and its ability to dynamically respond to the needs of communities. She values the opportunity and ability to highlight the expertise and work of others through collaboration.
Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Sandiford worked in research laboratories focused on physiological responses to stress in children and global health programs that created and facilitated policy, advocacy, and scientific communications to improve routine childhood immunization.
In addition to her work in health sciences, Ms. Sandiford is also a nationally certified and comprehensively trained Pilates instructor, concentrating on using Pilates as a modality for rehabilitation from acute and chronic injuries. She is also a certified Pregnancy and Postpartum Corrective Exercise Specialist.
Ms. Sandiford earned a MHS in global disease epidemiology and control from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a BS in biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Associate Scholar, Research Associate
- Associate Scholar, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Ms. Meyer is an Associate Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her primary research interests include health systems as they relate to global health security, disaster and pandemic nursing, workforce development and training, and domestic and international outbreak response.
At the Center, Ms. Meyer contributes to several projects that focus on disaster and pandemic nursing. She is currently co-leading the development of an International Resource Center for Pandemic and Disaster Nursing, which will provide educational and training resources, networking opportunities, and promote global nursing research and practice. Ms. Meyer also has coauthored several COVID-19-related reports on nursing, the US healthcare response, and recommendations for long-term care facilities. She also helped conduct 2 studies on the impacts of the pandemic on the nursing and broader healthcare workforce.
Ms. Meyer also has worked on several other projects seeking to reduce the impacts that infectious disease outbreaks and other disasters have on populations. In 2019, she helped to organize a working group in Bangladesh in collaboration with the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) to develop and refine a checklist to help improve health system resilience to outbreaks and natural hazards. She is a member of the Global Health Security Index project, which measures 195 countries' health security capacities across 6 different indicators. Additionally, she has led 3 research efforts under the Center's Outbreak Observatory, including an outbreak of measles in a daycare facility, an outbreak of mumps in an immigrant population, and Candida auris outbreaks in healthcare facilities in New York, Illinois, and California. Ms. Meyer is an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security and has guest-edited 2 special issues.
Ms. Meyer is currently a full-time doctoral student in the PhD program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, where she is studying the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on health service utilization. In 2016, she received an MPH with a concentration in infectious diseases from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her capstone focused on gastrointestinal anthrax from a global public health perspective. During her time as an MPH student, she worked as a research assistant for the Johns Hopkins Division of Infectious Diseases and earned a certificate in public health preparedness. She also has a BA in biology from Carroll College and a BSN from Georgetown University. Prior to attending graduate school, she worked as a burn and trauma intensive care nurse at a level 1 trauma center in Washington, DC.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate
- Senior Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins
Mr. Bloomfield is a Senior Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. His research focuses on the relationship between US law and biosecurity risks, with an emphasis on the role export controls, intellectual property, and competition law can play in reducing pandemic threats from emerging technologies. His work has been published in the Antitrust Law Journal, The BMJ, JAMA Internal Medicine, and JAMA Oncology, among other outlets.
Before joining the Center, Mr. Bloomfield served as a law clerk to Judge Patricia A. Millett of the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and Judge Timothy B. Dyk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School's Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law, where he researched pharmaceutical patent policy.
Mr. Bloomfield holds a JD from Yale Law School and a BA with honors from the University of Chicago in economic history. Prior to law school, he was a biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News in Boston, where he wrote investigative articles, broke news stories, and made regular television and radio appearances.
Expertise
Public health law
International law and global health policy
Intellectual property and competition law
Epidemic and pandemic preparedness policy
Biosecurity
Biotechnology
Job Titles:
- Analyst
- Research Associate
- Analyst, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Ms. Martin is an Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests include health systems preparedness for, response to, and recovery from infectious disease emergencies and the integration of clinical medicine and public health.
At the Center, Ms. Martin is involved in a variety of projects and contributes to both reports and peer-reviewed publications. Her work has covered topics related to outbreak response, especially as a member of the Outbreak Observatory team; operations related to the rapid distribution of novel countermeasures and mass vaccination; and improving health systems capacity.
During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms. Martin contributed to the development of numerous guidance documents to aid decision-makers in development of COVID-19 response plans. She served on the Baltimore City Health Department COVID-19 Long-Term Care Facility Working group, which focused on improving preparedness and response plans among long-term care facilities for older adults throughout the City of Baltimore.
Ms. Martin is currently a medical student at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. She received her MPH with concentration in infectious diseases from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School Public Health. During her graduate education, she worked on a team in the Johns Hopkins Biocontainment Unit to develop a training program for frontline healthcare workers on how to identify and safely isolate patients with high-consequence pathogen infections. She also earned a BS in biology and international relations from Lehigh University, where she served as a Youth Representative to the United Nations.
Ms. Serlemitsos is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (BSPH). Her research interests focus on applications of social and behavior change theory and practice to public health threats.
Ms. Serlemitsos also works at BSPH in the Center for Communication Programs, where she directs a USAID-funded, 8-year global project on social and behavior change, Breakthrough ACTION. She has worked in global health for more than 30 years, most while living in Africa. She has led risk communication, social mobilization, and behavior change programs addressing epidemics including HIV in southern Africa in the mid-1990s, Ebola in West Africa in 2014-2016, Zika in Latin American and the Caribbean in 2017-2019, and most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic globally. Ms. Serlemitsos has an MBA from Yale University, an MPH from Boston University, and a BA from Middlebury College.
Dr. Toner is a Senior Scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Senior Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His primary areas of interest are healthcare preparedness for catastrophic events, pandemic influenza, and medical response to bioterrorism. He is Managing Editor of the online newsletter Clinicians' Biosecurity News and an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security, the leading peer-reviewed journal in this field.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Toner has authored numerous reports and journal articles, including several describing hospital preparation approaches, estimating national personal protective equipment needs, proposing an ethical framework for allocation of scarce COVID-19 vaccine, exploring next-generation respirators and masks, and assessing the integration of primary care and public health. He chaired a National Academies of Medicine workshop on crisis standards of care during the pandemic. Dr. Toner frequently serves as an expert for major national and international news media.
Prior to the pandemic, Dr. Toner authored scores of scholarly papers and government reports on healthcare and pandemic preparedness, and he organized numerous meetings of national leaders on the topics of hospital preparedness, pandemic influenza, emerging infectious diseases, mass casualty disasters, biosecurity, and nuclear preparedness. He has spoken at many national and international conferences on a range of biosecurity topics and appeared in high-profile national television and print features on pandemic flu and bioterrorism preparedness. Dr. Toner served as the project director and principal designer of the influential pandemic exercises Clade X and Event 201 and has been the principal investigator of many projects to assess and advance healthcare preparedness.
Dr. Toner has been involved in hospital disaster planning since the mid-1980s. Prior to joining the Center, he was Medical Director of Disaster Preparedness at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, Maryland, where he practiced emergency medicine for 23 years. In 2003, he spearheaded the creation of one of the nation's first healthcare coalitions under the then new Hospital Preparedness Program of the US Department of Health and Human Services. The coalition included disaster preparedness personnel from the 5 Baltimore County hospitals, the county health department, and the county Office of Emergency Management. During this time, he also headed a large emergency medicine group practice and co-founded and managed a large primary care group practice and an independent urgent care center.
Dr. Sorrell is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. For the last 10 years, Dr. Sorrell has applied her technical laboratory training in virology and experience in government to contribute to global health security as a practitioner and an academic. Her current research portfolio combines the disciplines of basic science, biosafety, and health systems strengthening to address infectious disease threats whether they be novel, emerging, or re-emerging. Her work focuses on developing and applying a variety of methodologies to map, assess, and address both the structure and function of health systems. Dr. Sorrell collaborates across the US government, international organizations, and ministries around the world to identify elements required to support health systems strengthening and laboratory capacity-building for disease detection, reporting, risk assessment, and response. She is also interested in operational and implementation research questions related to sustainable health systems strengthening, with an emphasis on the prevention, management, and control of infectious diseases in humanitarian situations, and particularly countries and regions affected by conflict.
In addition to her research, Dr. Sorrell has designed and taught a number of courses on emerging infectious disease threats and disease detection and response in conflict settings. She previously served as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Biohazardous Threat Agents & Emerging Infectious Diseases MSc Program at Georgetown University.
Before joining the faculty, Dr. Sorrell was an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. Prior to that, she was a Senior Research Scientist at The George Washington University, Milken Institute School of Public Health. She also served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the Department of State, where she worked on foreign assistance activities in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa. Dr. Sorrell was a postdoctoral fellow both at Erasmus Medical Center, the Netherlands and the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research focused on the molecular mechanisms of interspecies transmission, primarily focusing on avian-to-human transmission of influenza A viruses. Dr. Sorrell received her undergraduate degree in animal science from Cornell University and an MSc and PhD in animal science and virology from the University of Maryland. She is an ELBI fellowship alumna and previous term member at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Job Titles:
- Specialist With Michigan Medicine Survival Flight
Mrs. Sabados is a DrPH student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests include infectious disease surveillance in the setting of climate events and population migration behavior.
Mrs. Sabados is a Flight Nurse Specialist with Michigan Medicine Survival Flight. She provides critical care air medical services throughout the US. Mrs. Sabados has also served as a nurse/medic in Haiti, Nepal, Poland, and for SMURD, an air and ground emergency rescue system in Romania. She has taught trauma EMS for various Naval medical units in Michigan. Mrs. Sabados is the Medical Advisory Chair of Nepal Medics, a US-Nepal NGO that collaborates with the Government of Nepal to establish a national EMS system. She also works with Kisoro Habitat for Humanities in Uganda to address food security challenges among the Batwa Indigenous community.
Mrs. Sabados holds an MAS in global health planning and management from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a BSN from Eastern Michigan University. She is a member of the Alpha chapter of the Delta Omega Public Health Honorary Society and was recently awarded the Timothy Baker Award for International Health Development.
Ms. Moore is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests pertain to biosecurity, risk sciences, and community resilience. She is particularly interested in biosecurity risk assessment practices to drive change in policy.
Ms. Moore began her career in public health through direct commissioning into the United States Air Force (USAF). She currently serves on active duty as a public health officer. In this role, she develops, plans, and implements public health programs for the USAF bases and locations where she is assigned to create and sustain resilient and ready service members and healthy families. She has worked in multiple states within the US and abroad in East Asia, Southwest Asia, and Europe.
Ms. Moore received an MPH in epidemiology from the University of South Florida - Tampa (USF) and a BS in biology from Christopher Newport University (CNU).
Job Titles:
- Associate Editor of the Journal Health Security
- Member of the Department of State 's International Security Advisory Board
Dr. Gronvall is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is an immunologist by training.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she led the Center's ongoing efforts to track the development and marketing of molecular and antigen tests and serology tests, as well as the development of national strategies for COVID-19 serology (antibody) tests and SARS-CoV-2 serosurveys in the United States. She leads work on improving indoor air quality to reduce pathogen transmission, including guidance for K-12 schools, and is a public health advisor to the Baltimore City Public School system. She also has written about the scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic(link is external) , the contested origin of SARS-CoV-2(link is external) , and the implications for national and international security.
Dr. Gronvall is the author of Synthetic Biology: Safety, Security, and Promise(link is external) . In the book, she describes what can be done to minimize technical and social risks and maximize the benefits of synthetic biology, focusing on biosecurity, biosafety, ethics, and US national competitiveness-important sectors of national security. Dr. Gronvall is also the author of Preparing for Bioterrorism: The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Leadership in Biosecurity. Through her description of major grants that represented the foundation's investments in civilian preparedness, public health law, law enforcement, air filtering in buildings, influenza preparedness, and business preparedness, she constructed, for a nontechnical audience, a chronicle of early gains in US efforts to confront the threat of bioterrorism.
Dr. Gronvall is a member of the Department of State's International Security Advisory Board(link is external) , which provides advice about arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation, and national security aspects of emerging technologies. She is a member of the Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee (NExTRAC), which provides recommendations to the Director of the National Institutes of Health and is a public forum for the discussion of the scientific, safety, and ethical issues associated with emerging biotechnologies. As of 2023, she is a member of the National Academies' Forum on Microbial Threats.
From 2010 to 2020, Dr. Gronvall was a member of the Threat Reduction Advisory Committee, which provided the Secretary of Defense with independent advice and recommendations on reducing the risk to the United States, its military forces, and its allies and partners posed by nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional threats. During 2014-2015, she led a preparatory group that examined the US government response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa as a case study for the Department of Defense's strategic role in health security and made recommendations for future Department of Defense actions in response to disease outbreaks. She served as the Science Advisor for the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism from April 2009 until the Commission ended in February 2010. She has testified before Congress about the safety and security of high-containment biological laboratories in the United States and served on several task forces related to laboratory and pathogen security. Dr. Gronvall has investigated and presented policy recommendations on the governance of science to the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva, Switzerland.
In addition to being a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Gronvall is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security (formerly Biosecurity and Bioterrorism). She is a founding member of the Center. Prior to joining the faculty, she worked at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. She was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Associate at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Dr. Gronvall received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University for work on T-cell receptor/MHC I interactions and worked as a protein chemist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She received a BS in biology from Indiana University, Bloomington.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Senior Program Coordinator at the Johns Hopkins
Hannah Feeney is a Senior Program Coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She provides administrative assistance to various staff members and supports the mission areas of the Center. She primarily handles scheduling and travel, along with other administrative duties.
Before joining the Center in December 2018, Ms. Feeney had a varied background of experience in sales, purchasing, and office management. Originally from upstate New York, she holds a BS in health and exercise science from Syracuse University.
Ms. Hill is a DrPH student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Born and raised in the St. Louis, Missouri, area, Ms. Hill attended Colorado State University, graduating in 1993 with a Bachelor of Science degree in biological sciences. She then joined the US Army and was employed in a biological research capacity, working in a blood storage laboratory for 9 years. She conducted clinical trials and performed bench work, the first half as active duty and the second half as a civilian contractor. During this time, Ms. Hill earned a master's degree in environmental biology from Hood College. In 2002, she began work as a data manager for clinical research trials at Emmes, now holding the position of Vice President, Vaccines and Infectious Diseases.
Mr. Hurley is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research interests focus on the intersection of emergency medical services (EMS) and public health.
In addition to his studies, Mr. Hurley serves full time as the State of Maine EMS Director, holding that position since October 2019. Prior to Maine, Mr. Hurley served as the EMS Program Manager for the District of Columbia. Mr. Hurley has worked in the EMS field since 2007 in various roles, from emergency medical technician (EMT) to paramedic training officer.
Mr. Hurley received an MPH in health policy and management from Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, a master's degree in emergency and disaster management from Georgetown University, and a BS in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr. Hurley maintains his national certification as a clinical paramedic (NRP).
James G. Hodge is a Contributing Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Peter Kiewit Foundation Professor of Law and Director of the nationally ranked Center for Public Health Law and Policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University (ASU). Through scholarship, teaching, and projects, Professor Hodge delves into multiple areas of health law, public health law, global health law, ethics, and human rights. Since September 2010, he also serves as Director, Western Region Office of the Network for Public Health Law (funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). The Western Region Office has assisted public health lawyers, public health officials, practitioners, and others nationally on more than 5,300 claims.
Professor Hodge has published more than 290 articles in journals of law, medicine, public health, and bioethics; 2 books in public health law; 25 book chapters; dozens of reports; and guest edited 4 symposium issues in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Jurimetrics, and the Annals of Health Law. He is listed among the Top 20 Most-Cited Health Law Scholars in Web of Science (2013-2017) and is ranked within the top 1% of all downloaded authors internationally in the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).
As past President of the Public Health Law Association and the Board of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics (ASLME), Professor Hodge co-chaired the national public health law conference sponsored by RWJF in 2010 and 2014. He hosted ASLME's Health Law Professors Conference at ASU Law in 2012 and 2022. With colleagues at the California Department of Public Health, he co-chaired the Public Health Law Summit - Western Region in Sacramento, California, in 2017.
Professor Hodge received the 2006 Henrik L. Blum Award for Excellence in Health Policy from the American Public Health Association; the 2009 Outstanding Faculty Award from the Department of Health Policy & Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and the 2014 Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Charleston Honors Program. He has drafted with others several model public health laws including the Model State Public Health Information Privacy Act, Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, RWJF "Turning Point" Model State Public Health Act, and Uniform Emergency Volunteer Health Practitioners Act.
Professor Hodge has secured more than $14 million in external funds for diverse scholarly and applied projects, including extensive work in emergency legal and ethical preparedness, health impact assessments, obesity, and vaccinations. His work on these and other topics has appeared or been cited in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, US News & World Report, Time, Newsweek, Forbes, Atlantic, NBC News, CNN, Politico, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Bloomberg News, among others, as well as several journals, including Science, JAMA, NEJM, and AJPH. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he was cited or quoted in over 600 print and online media sources.
He has served on several expert committees of the National Academies of Science, Engineering & Medicine and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and he is an editorial board member of Health Security and the Journal of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. Professor Hodge has lectured extensively in international locales, including Sydney, Toronto, Barcelona, Geneva, and Dublin. Before joining ASU Law, he was Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Core Faculty, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; and Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center.
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- Fellow at the Johns Hopkins
- Resident Physician at Stanford University
Dr. Pannu is a Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Her primary research interests include global health security and biosecurity, pandemic prevention and preparedness, and emerging infectious diseases. At the Center, she works on US government-oriented projects, including drafting recommendations regarding dual-use and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research regulation.
Dr. Pannu is an internal medicine resident physician at Stanford University, where she also completed her medical degree. She also is licensed in Uganda, where she has worked at Kirrudu Referral Hospital in Kampala treating patients with HIV and other infectious diseases. Dr. Pannu has participated in the design, management, and publication of results for clinical trials of therapeutics and medical devices.
As a fellow with the Council on Strategic Risks, Dr. Pannu interfaces with security and intelligence experts on biosecurity issues. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she served as a consultant to the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, helping to draft The Apollo Program for Biodefense, a roadmap for investing in US capabilities to prevent and respond to future biological threats. While working for Google AI/Google Health on remote diagnostics prior to the pandemic, Dr. Pannu helped launch Mobile Vitals on all Pixel phones.
Dr. Pannu's publications have been featured in the journals The Lancet Global Health, Health Security, Global Policy, Current Opinion in Infectious Disease, and Nature Protocols, among others. She earned a BSc with first class honors in biology from McGill University.
Ms. Cargill is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her dissertation focuses on improving biosecurity practices among poultry vendors in noncommercial animal markets through the exploration of producer knowledge, attitudes, and risk perceptions around regulations and infectious disease.
She is currently the Director of Evaluation at the Texas Health Institute and previously served as the Assistant Director of the Institute for Infectious Animal Diseases at Texas A&M University. She holds an MPH in community health sciences and a BA in anthropology, both from Texas A&M.
Mr. Tarangelo is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Since 2017, he has worked as a federal contractor through G2 Global Solutions supporting the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). His work focuses on countering biological threats and advancing national health security capabilities.
Previously, Mr. Tarangelo completed internship rotations at the US Department of State's Office of International Health and Biodefense and HHS's Office of Global Affairs while pursuing his master's degree full-time. In 2023, he was named to Out in National Security's Out Leaders List, which highlights LGBTQIA+ individuals working in national security or foreign policy.
Mr. Tarangelo holds an MS in public health microbiology and emerging infectious diseases from George Washington University and a BS from the University of Miami.
Mr. Ubiera is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
He is a former US Air Force Public Health Officer with various stateside assignments and tours overseas. He is currently Chief, Integrated Biosurveillance Branch at the Defense Health Agency, Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division, where he continues to work on global and public health issues.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Website Administrator
Ms. Cizek is the Website Administrator at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She develops and maintains the Center's websites. She provides creative direction on enterprise web and graphic projects.
Prior to joining the Center in January 2018, Ms. Cizek worked as a webmaster for almost 8 years at LifeBridge Health. She maintained the system's websites and developed digital graphics.
She has a BS in interior design with a minor in art from Radford University. She pursued a graphic/web design certificate at Anne Arundel Community College.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Director of Publications / Managing Editor, Health Security
- Director of Publications at the Johns Hopkins
Ms. Fox is the Director of Publications at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She serves as Managing Editor of the bimonthly journal Health Security (formerly Biosecurity and Bioterrorism), the leading peer-reviewed journal in this field.
Prior to joining the Center in April 2020, Ms. Fox was a Senior Technical Writer/Editor at Palladium and a Technical Writer/Editor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP). At CCP, she managed the knowledge management, publication development, and editorial processes for several projects, including the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative and Knowledge for Health, and acted as associate editor for the East African Health Research Journal and Global Health: Science and Practice. Before joining CCP in 2015, Ms. Fox was a consultant for the World Health Organization HIV Department in Geneva, Switzerland, where she contributed to the research and development of several guideline, framework, and policy documents.
Ms. Fox has an MPH in social, behavioral, and community health and an MA in history, with a research focus on modern British and American history of science and medicine (epidemics, tropical diseases, human experimentation, health systems, networks of knowledge, stigma and disability), gender, and war and empire, from Indiana University. She also has an MSc in the history of science, medicine, and technology from the University of Oxford and a BFA in visual communication from Northern Illinois University.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Budget Specialist
Ms. Taylor is a Budget Specialist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She works on financial and administrative sponsored and non-sponsored funds management, including day-to-day financial operations of the Center.
Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Taylor worked with the State of Maryland Department of Social Services, assisting with financial aid provision to individuals in Baltimore County. She also has worked in banking and has more than 9 years of experience in finance.
Dr. Mayigane is pursuing a DrPH in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (BSPH). He currently serves as Acting Unit Head for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme's Country Simulation Exercises and Reviews unit in Geneva, where he leads WHO global efforts to strengthen International Health Regulations (2005) core capacities through emergency response reviews and simulation exercises.
Recognized by the African Union with a Medal of Service to Humanity for his commendable role in controlling the West Africa Ebola outbreak, Dr. Mayigane showcased bravery and leadership, leading a large team of 120 health professionals during the acute crisis. He is a certified emergency manager and has engaged in various roles with the US CDC and State Department. His educational background includes a veterinary medicine doctorate and a master's degree in applied epidemiology from notable universities in Senegal and Rwanda, respectively.
Ms. Stienstra is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has 15 years of experience as an emergency manager at various levels of government and provided operational and strategic guidance to elected officials during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the 2015 Ebola outbreak, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on these experiences, Ms. Stienstra is particularly interested in the intersection of disaster preparedness frameworks and global catastrophic biological risks.
Ms. Stienstra received a BS in physiology from the University of California, Los Angeles, an MSc in crisis, emergency, and risk management from the George Washington University, and an MS in leadership from the Washington University in St. Louis.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Associate Scholar, Research Associate
- Associate Scholar, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Ms. Mullen is an Associate Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her primary interests include health security policy, outbreak preparedness and response, bioterrorism, and public health planning for mass gatherings. Ms. Mullen is a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Novel Coronavirus-19 Mass Gatherings Expert Group and the WHO Simulation Exercise Technical Advisory Group. Ms. Mullen is also a member of the Independent Expert Panel for the International Olympic Committee and a focal point to the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network for Johns Hopkins University.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms. Mullen has developed a variety of risk-based tools and guidance, including self-assessments and decision trees, for international organizations, policy leaders, and other stakeholders to help their decision-making processes. As part of the WHO Novel Coronavirus-19 Mass Gatherings Expert Group, Ms. Mullen produced generic, sport, and religious mass gathering risk assessments and mitigation checklists for event organizers, which are available on the WHO website. Ms. Mullen has provided technical expertise to the United Nations to help them make risk-informed decisions on which critical events need to be held, modified, postponed, or canceled during the pandemic.
Before joining the Center, Ms. Mullen worked for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, contributing to projects dedicated to improving international and national efforts to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear deliberate events. Her work included the development and implementation of training modules and a complimentary assessment tool for the Joint External Evaluation, which enables member states to determine their level of readiness for chemical or biological deliberate events. Ms. Mullen also contributed to the revision of the 2004 Public Health Response to Biological and Chemical Weapons: WHO Guidance.
Ms. Mullen earned an Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI) fellowship in 2018 through the Center for Health Security. Before that, she received an MPH in epidemiology with a concentration in global health from the University of Texas Health Science Center in 2017. During her studies, Ms. Mullen worked for the Irish Department of Health's Health Protection Surveillance Centre on the development of a national screening guideline for hepatitis C viral disease.
Ms. Mullen earned a BS in molecular and cell biology from Texas A&M University in 2015. During this time, she worked for WHO supporting national ministries of health with their preparedness efforts for mass gatherings. Ms. Mullen is currently completing a PhD with the Public Health and Policy Department of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in mass gathering preparedness during health emergencies.
Lieutenant Commander McGrath is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research interests pertain to health security in the context of defense and military affairs.
He is a US Navy officer currently stationed in Washington, DC, where his work is focused on Homeland Defense and Defense Support of Civil Authorities. His previous assignments include the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, 1st Medical Battalion, and US Naval Hospital Yokosuka, Japan. He has completed deployments with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force - Crisis Response - Central Command and aboard USNS MERCY in support of Pacific Partnership 2015.
He holds an MPH in epidemiology from Boston University and a BA from the University of Connecticut and is a graduate of the USMC Expeditionary Warfare School.
Mr. Bursley is a part-time DrPH student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health. His interests center around creating stronger collaborations between emergency management and epidemiology during public health emergencies.
Mr. Bursley is an environmental epidemiologist with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Division of Environmental Health. He leads the Division's environmental public health emergencies and time-critical actions capabilities program. He is a member of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and regularly participates in their Disaster Epidemiology Subcommittee activities.
He received an MPH in occupational and environmental epidemiology from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He also holds a BA in biology from Anderson University (Anderson, IN) and is certified as a Professional Emergency Manager (PEM) by Michigan State Police, Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division (MSP/EMHSD).
Mr. Walsh is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of the 2018 cohort of the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI).
Previously, he was Associate Staff in the Biological and Chemical Technologies group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL), a Department of Defense Research and Development Laboratory. He established a technical program at MIT LL to develop and apply machine learning methods to engineering biology with a focus on rapid medical countermeasures and antibody-based therapeutics. Mr. Walsh also has supported work in biosensor development, threat attribution, warfighter health, and biological data assurance. Prior to MIT LL, he worked at MassBiologics of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, developing assays for the characterization of therapeutic monoclonal antibody production.
Mr. Walsh received a BA in chemistry from Skidmore College.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Associate Scholar, Research Associate
- Associate Scholar, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Mr. Shearer is an Associate Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His primary research and practice interests include infectious disease outbreak and epidemic response, healthcare and public health resilience for high-consequence infectious disease events, biological weapons nonproliferation policy, and exercise development and implementation.
Mr. Shearer contributes to a broad scope of domestic and international Center projects, including numerous efforts associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and he was an integral part of developing and implementing the Clade X and Event 201 pandemic exercises. He serves as an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security and formerly served as Managing Analyst at the Center as well as the Deputy Program Manager for the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative Fellowship program.
Mr. Shearer's domestic work focuses principally on outbreak and epidemic response policy and operations. He has served as Project Manager for Outbreak Observatory since its inception in 2017. Outbreak Observatory aims to capture and disseminate operational lessons from outbreak responses, based on the firsthand experience of frontline responders, in order to improve domestic and global public health and healthcare preparedness. As part of Outbreak Observatory, he has completed studies on the public health response to domestic hepatitis A and measles epidemics and the operational impact of seasonal influenza on hospitals and health systems. He also contributed to Center projects on US healthcare operations, including in high-level isolation units and monitoring and movement restriction policies in response to the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola epidemic as well as communications and operations for medical countermeasures distribution and dispensing.
Mr. Shearer also has a diverse international portfolio, ranging from national-level public health and preparedness capacity to regional natural, accidental, and deliberate biological threats to biological weapons nonproliferation policy. He is the Lead Analyst for the Center's Southeast Asia Multilateral Biosecurity Dialogue, which convenes a diverse group of experts from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States to discuss ongoing and emerging biosecurity priorities, challenges, and threats in the Southeast Asia region. He has participated in multiple collaborations with the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC), including an analysis of Taiwan CDC's seasonal influenza mass vaccination program and as a member of the External Assessment Team for Taiwan's 2016 Joint External Evaluation. He also developed and conducted biosecurity, outbreak response, and exercise development and implementation training for private sector clinicians and other health experts in Iraq. He is currently leading research to develop policy guidance for elected and appointed officials on the use of nonpharmaceutical interventions for emerging outbreaks and epidemics.
Mr. Shearer leads much of the Center's work on the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) and often represents the Center at BWC meetings in Geneva, Switzerland. He helped conceive and direct the Global Forum on Scientific Advances Important to the BWC, which convenes an international group of technical and policy experts to inform BWC delegations on emerging and future capabilities in biotechnology and other scientific fields with potential impact on BWC policy and implementation. He supported the BWC Implementation Support Unit in hosting a series of regional workshops with Association of Southeast Asian Nations States Parties, including the development of a tabletop exercise scenario. He is currently leading a study to identify assurance mechanisms to increase the degree of certainty that States Parties are meeting their BWC obligations and support BWC implementation.
Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Shearer worked at local public health departments in Michigan and California, developing and implementing medical countermeasures distribution and dispensing exercises, updating communicable disease response protocols, conducting infectious disease surveillance and outbreak investigations, and supporting emergency preparedness activities, including returning traveler monitoring and other Ebola-related preparedness efforts. Before transitioning his career to health security, he served as the Combat Information Center Officer and Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection Officer onboard the USS Lake Erie and as an auxiliaries engineering division officer and Propulsion Plant Watch Officer onboard the USS Enterprise.
Mr. Shearer earned an MPH in epidemiology from the University of Michigan in 2014 and a BS in aerospace engineering from the United States Naval Academy in 2007.
Job Titles:
- Health Security Policy Advisor / Professional Profile
- Health Security Policy Advisor at the Johns Hopkins
Melissa is the Health Security Policy Advisor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. They bring years of experience working on and around Capitol Hill, most recently serving as Legislative Fellow to Representative Anna G. Eshoo in the US House of Representatives, where they specialized in technology issues, including risks posed by biotechnology. Their most recent projects include investigating the feasibility of mandatory gene synthesis screening legislation and the dual-use biosecurity risks posed by open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model releases. Previously, they served as Law Clerk for the House Oversight Committee and as an intern for Representative Kweisi Mfume. In addition to experience on the Hill, Melissa has worked in the executive branch, for a technology trade association, and on a successful Senate election campaign. They are an alum of the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI) fellowship.
Melissa graduated from The George Washington University Law School, where they specialized in administrative law and legislation with a national security focus. While in law school, they studied the First Amendment implications of governmental restriction of biological information hazards. Melissa also was a Davies Jackson Scholar at the University of Cambridge and graduated summa cum laude from Bucknell University. In their spare time, Melissa organizes several monthly emerging technology and national security events, including a monthly biosecurity meetup in Washington, DC.
Expertise
Biotechnology
Biosecurity
National security
Job Titles:
- Administrator
- Support Staff Member
Meredith Piplani, MM, is the Administrator at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She supports the business functions of the center and oversees human resources, finance, and administration. She manages the financial and administrative support staff.
Ms. Piplani began working at Johns Hopkins University in 2005 and has held various financial and grants management roles at the university. She holds a BS in accounting, a BA in music education from Virginia Tech, and an MM in voice from the Peabody Institute.
Job Titles:
- Member of IEEE Engineering
Dr. Montague is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He also holds a joint appointment as a Research Associate with the Future of Humanity Institute(link is external) at the University of Oxford. His expertise spans a variety of disciplines, including synthetic biology, bioinformatics, and astrobiology. He has worked in the field of biosecurity studying the areas of synthetic DNA sequence screening and characterization, the genetics of human performance, existential risk, and biosecurity threat models informed by recent advances in biotechnology. He has contributed to red teaming exercises and to the Clade X scenario.
Dr. Montague's work at the Center is focused on the implications of new biotechnologies to biosecurity, with an emphasis on the potential for deliberate hostile events targeting agriculture and industry rather than accidental or natural events that involve human health. As part of this focus, he led a team that produced a report, Gene Drives: Pursuing Opportunities, Minimizing Risk. While continuing to investigate gene drives, and in conjunction with the Open Philanthropy Project(link is external) and the Future of Humanity Institute, he is currently studying the technological and economic limits of securing agriculture, with an emphasis upon artificial light-driven closed bioreactor-grown food such as microalgae.
Due to the current pandemic, his recent efforts have been heavily redirected toward the Center's COVID-19 analysis and policy response. Dr. Montague has provided scientific analysis of the genetics and evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and has investigated the potential for antibody dependent enhancement of its pathology. He contributed to 2 Center reports: A National Plan to Enable Comprehensive COVID-19 Case Finding and Contact Tracing in the US and Recommendations for Improving National Nurse Preparedness for Pandemic Response: Early Lessons from COVID-19.
Prior to joining the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, he was a staff scientist at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, where he was part of the first group to produce a living bacterial organism driven by a fully synthetic genome(link is external) . He also participated in the development of a number of the tools that have come to define the field of synthetic biology including yeast spheroplast assembly, Gibson assembly, overlap design, biologically neutral watermarking by encoding text data into DNA(link is external) , and quality control work. He applied these tools when he participated in the development of rapidly deployable flu vaccine technology using gene synthesis technology.
Dr. Montague is a member of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and the Mars Society. He received a PhD in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005.
Dr. Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist, is a Senior Scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Senior Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Since 1998, she has focused her public health career on generating and applying evidence to advise policymakers and practitioners on how to collaborate with private citizens, businesses, and faith- and community-based groups in efforts to manage catastrophic health events, both effectively and equitably. Her areas of expertise include community resilience to disaster, public engagement in policymaking, crisis and emergency risk communication, and public health emergency management (readiness/response/recovery).
During the COVID-19 pandemic response, Dr. Schoch-Spana has worked diligently to translate social scientific insights into actionable recommendations for policymakers and practitioners, including most recently as co-Principal Investigator for CommuniVax-a national ethnographic research coalition whose expert advisory group and 6 local teams are partnering with communities of color to tackle COVID-19 vaccine access and acceptance issues and to put equity at the center of the pandemic recovery process. She has also collaborated in generating an ethical framework for the allocation of COVID-19 vaccines, advanced understanding of the pandemic's mental health challenges, contributed to decision-making guidance for governors on safe reopening strategies, consulted on crisis standards of care and their communication to the public, and spotlighted the need for a transformative pandemic recovery process focused on the whole person.
Dr. Schoch-Spana's national advisory roles include currently serving on the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the US Environmental Protection Agency and on the Resilient America Roundtable of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), which she also formerly cochaired. She also serves on the NASEM Committee on Community Engagement in Southeast Texas: Pilot Project to Enhance Community Capacity and Resilience to Floods and served on the NASEM Committee that planned the March 2022 workshop, "Building Public Trust in Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response (PHEPR) Science."
Dr. Schoch-Spana has helped guide the direction of policy and practice in public health emergency management such that planning and operations are more behaviorally realistic and contribute to health equity; public health communicators are better equipped to meet the population's informational needs in an emergency; citizens have more venues to contribute their practical, intellectual, and ethical inputs to readiness and response endeavors; and national and local communities are striving to withstand and learn from disasters, rather than merely respond to them.
From 2003 to 2017, Dr. Schoch-Spana worked at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security; prior to that she worked at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, starting in 1998. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Bryn Mawr College.
Job Titles:
- Public Health Officer for the Air National Guard 's Office of the Air
Mrs. Brooks Dumproff is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests pertain to the Air and Army National Guard's roles in public health emergencies.
Mrs. Brooks Dumproff currently serves as a full-time Public Health Officer for the Air National Guard's Office of the Air Surgeon (ANG/SG) at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. In this role, she serves as the infectious disease and public health emergency liaison for the 90 ANG Medical Groups across all 54 US states and territories. She also serves as a town Planning Commissioner in Lovettsville, VA, where she assists with reviewing and voting on town comprehensive plans and zoning ordinances.
Ms. Ajumobi is a DrPH student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests include improving risk analysis of the spillover, emergence, and spread of environmentally driven emerging and re-emerging infectious disease (EID) pathogens. Ms. Ajumobi is also working on a full-time visiting fellowship focused on advising on policy solutions that enable the appropriate use of NextGen sequencing technologies for environmental monitoring and early warning about EID pathogens and the development of effective antimicrobial drugs. She worked for several years with the World Bank's Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice, where she provided technical, operational, and policy advice to country governments on enhancing health security capacities of countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Ms. Ajumobi holds an MPH in epidemiology and global health from Columbia University and a BS in biochemistry from the University of Lagos. She is also a 2019 ELBI Fellowship alumna and a graduate of the Risk Sciences and Public Policy Certification Program at Johns Hopkins University.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Communications Officer at the Johns Hopkins
Ms. Vasudevan is a Communications Officer at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She assists with planning and implementing the Center's communications activities and with tracking the Center's impact.
Prior to joining the Center, she specialized in the practice of policy, advocacy, and scientific communications at the Johns Hopkins International Vaccine Access Center. Prior to public health, she conducted microbiology and immunology research.
Ms. Vasudevan is currently a DrPH candidate in global health at The George Washington University. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on the process of translating public health evidence into policy and programmatic recommendations in low- and middle-income countries. She has an MS in biological sciences from the University of Maryland and an MSPH in global disease epidemiology and control from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she also earned a certificate in vaccine science and policy. She earned a BS in biochemistry and molecular biology and an Honors College certificate from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Job Titles:
- Information Technology Director
- Support Staff Member
- Information Technology Director at the Johns Hopkins
Mr. Tyson is the Information Technology Director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. He manages all technology-related services at the Center and provides daily IT support for the staff. He is the Center's contact for information systems services provided by the Johns Hopkins University enterprise information systems departments.
He has a BS in information systems from Johns Hopkins University and over 20 years of information technology experience.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Event Planner
Ms. Brown is an Event Planner for the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She plans and manages logistics for the Center's events both domestically and internationally.
Prior to joining the Center in 2022, Ms. Brown spent several years planning tech conferences. She holds a BS in hospitality management from James Madison University.
Job Titles:
- Analyst
- Research Associate
- Analyst, Research Associate / Professional Profile
Ms. Vahey is an Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her primary interests include agrosecurity, infectious disease epidemiology, zoonotics, defense intelligence, health security policy, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense agents.
Ms. Vahey received an MHS in environmental health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2020. Her thesis explored the link between agricultural runoff from US swine, dairy cattle, and beef cattle operations and its impact on environmental and public health. During her studies, she worked as a graduate research assistant at the Center on projects that combined her interest in agriculture and health security, including investigating the potential uses for algae as a food source. As a student, she also earned a certificate in risk sciences and public policy to build on her interest and skills in the science policy field.
Ms. Vahey received a BSA in animal biology, BS in environmental health science, and a Certificate in agrosecurity from the University of Georgia in 2019. She split her course and research efforts between clinical work at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine and health security topics. On the Large Animal Emergency Critical Care Team at the College of Veterinary Medicine hospital, she assisted in triaging patients that ranged from average livestock to exotics, like giraffes and camels. She transitioned from individual clinical work to a larger-scale science policy focus as she worked on her agrosecurity certificate. During that time, she had opportunity to work with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Counterterrorism Task Force to explore the underdeveloped aspects of agricultural security and examine the feasibility of potential attack and defense plans on the US agricultural sector.
Dr. Bruns is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Bruns's research focuses on economic modeling and cost-benefit analysis of topics related to public health and the prevention and mitigation of global catastrophic biological risks, such as: long-term social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic; government policy responses and environmental engineering technologies to reduce the risks of future pandemics; pandemic-related catastrophe bonds and insurance markets; emerging technologies for securable indoor food production; and the monetized costs of health-related misinformation.
Dr. Bruns's long-term research agenda includes using cost-benefit analysis to make the world's preparations for pandemics and emerging biological risks as effective as possible and expanding the use of quality-adjusted life years to better measure a variety of life states and social conditions, so that cost-benefit analysis can include and properly account for all expected side effects of public policies.
Before joining the Center, Dr. Bruns was a Senior Economist at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), doing cost-benefit modeling of many FDA regulations and actions, including the Intentional Adulteration rule, which was designed to protect food production facilities against terrorist attacks; the PHO GRAS determination, also known as the "trans fat ban"; and a variety of other rules relating to the safety of food and medical devices. Dr. Bruns also did preliminary modeling on a proposed FDA Nicotine Product Standard, a de facto ban on cigarettes that would have many significant effects on public health and safety and other social conditions, as well as research to quantify and monetize the marginal per-unit effects of a variety of food contaminants, such as mycological toxins and arsenic in rice.
Dr. Bruns received a PhD in economics from Clemson University, with primary concentrations in public economics and policy, industrial organization, and antitrust and regulation, as well as secondary concentrations in econometrics, financial economics, game theory, microeconomics, and property rights.
Dr. Waldhorn is a Contributing Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
From 2004 to 2010, Dr. Waldhorn served as Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC, now the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. In 2020, he returned to the Center as a Contributing Scholar. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his research has focused on hospital, healthcare system, and community preparedness for pandemics and other public health emergencies and the interactions among primary care physicians, public health, and community-based organizations in the response to the pandemic. Dr. Waldhorn also has served on working groups of the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research and the American College of Chest Physicians on mass casualty acute hospital and critical care. Additionally, he has spoken at national conferences on hospital and intensive care unit preparedness for mass casualty events and pandemics.
At Georgetown University, Dr. Waldhorn is a senior teacher and mentor for faculty, fellows, residents, and students in the Departments of Medicine and Family Medicine. He directs a course on Public Health and Health Policy for Clinicians, is Co-Director of the Population Health Scholar Track in the School of Medicine, and supervises fellows and residents in clinical care and research in pulmonary and sleep disorders medicine. He served as Chair of the Department of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at Georgetown University Hospital from 2001 to 2004. Prior to that, he directed Georgetown's Medical Intensive Care Unit, Sleep Disorders Center, and the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. He joined the faculty of Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1981.
Dr. Waldhorn received an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and an MD from Boston University School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine and pulmonary and critical care medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the American Academy of Sleep Disorders Medicine.
Mr. Henry is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His dissertation research examines the operation of public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr. Henry currently serves as a policy analyst within CDC's new Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce.
He began his public health career as a CDC Public Health Associate assigned to the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department in Charleston, West Virginia, where he supported their infectious disease epidemiology and emergency preparedness activities. Following this assignment, Roberto served as the Special Assistant to the Director of CDC's Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, and then for the Director of the Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services. Throughout his career, Mr. Henry has participated in several emergency responses, including for Ebola, Zika, and COVID-19.
Mr. Henry earned a BS in biology and an MPH from the University of Connecticut.
Dr. Khatri is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He received his medical degree in 2010 in Nepal and earned an MPH in global health from the University of Washington, Seattle, as a Fulbright Scholar.
Dr. Khatri has a passion for improving public health globally and shaping public health interventions, from advocating for refugees to creating programs for young girls and women against human trafficking. He has played a leadership role in numerous public health projects in limited-resource settings around the world, including in Nepal, Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, and in the refugee camps of Jordan and Greece.
Ms. Calabrese is a DrPH student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her interests include research related to infectious disease surveillance; epidemiology; and associated coinfections and threats in infants, children, adolescents, pregnant people, and women. She is particularly interested in data generation and reporting for emerging infections.
She currently works at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) in the Maternal and Pediatric Infectious Disease Branch (MPIDB). Her work supports and coordinates domestic and international research and training in HIV, congenital infections, and vaccine-preventable diseases. Prior to joining NICHD, she was a 2016 Summer Internship Program (SIP) fellow in the Social and Behavioral Research Branch (SBRB) at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).
Ms. Calabrese received her BS in public health sciences from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an MPH from Northeastern University in Boston.
Dr. Ravi is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her primary research interests include infectious disease outbreaks, vaccine policy, health systems strengthening efforts in low- and middle-income settings, and the intersections between health, security, and human rights.
Dr. Ravi's work focuses on understanding and improving health system responses to a range of public health threats. She is involved with many globally focused Center projects examining health system resilience, risk communication and community engagement, and global health security. Between 2014 and 2016, she helped plan several strategic dialogues on biosecurity policy between the United States and partners in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. More recently, she helped develop a checklist to improve health system resilience to infectious disease outbreaks and natural hazards and contributed to the development of the Global Health Security Index, the first comprehensive assessment of health security capacities across 195 countries.
Dr. Ravi's domestically focused work includes analyses of challenges related to the emergency dissemination of novel medical countermeasures, strategies for strengthening healthcare coalitions, and risk communication challenges during public health emergencies. In 2020, Dr. Ravi served as a member of the Working Group on Readying Populations for COVID-19 Vaccine, which issued recommendations for promoting uptake of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in the United States. Subsequently, she joined the CommuniHealth (formerly CommuniVax) Coalition to support equitable COVID-19 vaccination and community health-strengthening efforts in the US. Currently, she also supports an effort to identify metrics of holistic recovery from epidemics and pandemics.
In 2022, Dr. Ravi completed a PhD in Health Systems through the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where her doctoral research examined last-mile challenges in vaccine delivery, post-epidemic routine immunization challenges, and vaccination equity in resource-constrained settings. She was a Fellow in the 2015 class of the Synthetic Biology Leadership Excellence Accelerator Program. In 2013, she received an MPH in infectious disease management, intervention, and community practice from the University of Pittsburgh and served as a Global Impact Fellow with Unite for Sight in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, delivering basic eye care to underserved regions. Ms. Ravi received a BA in biology from Saint Louis University in 2011.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Research Program Manager at the Johns Hopkins
Ms. Firestone is a Research Program Manager at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She provides program management for various research and academic initiatives and supports faculty and staff across all areas of the Center.
Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Firestone worked at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, where she managed nursing research projects related to workforce development and emergency preparedness and response.
She earned a BS in animal science from the University of Maryland, College Park and an MSW from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Ms. Singaravelu is a DrPH student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
She works as a Program Officer at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine where she supports the Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Disasters and Emergencies and the Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats. Before joining the Academies, Ms. Singaravelu oversaw a portfolio of digital health tools at IBM. From 2015 to 2019, she supported health emergency preparedness and response as a consultant at WHO. Prior to this, she worked on psychosocial support programs for HIV-affected children in South Africa.
Ms. Singaravelu completed an MSc global mental health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and BA in anthropology from Union College. She was an Emerging Leader in Biosecurity (ELBI) Fellow at Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security in 2022, and she holds a graduate certificate in Risk Sciences and Public Policy from Hopkins.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Senior Administrative Coordinator
Ms. Liggins is a Senior Administrative Coordinator to senior faculty and analysts and the Office Manager at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Liggins worked in both the advertising and banking industries. She is a career administrative professional with more than 30 years of experience.
Dr. Sell is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. At the Center, she conducts, manages, and leads research projects to develop a greater understanding of potentially large-scale health events. She also serves as an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security. Dr. Sell codirects the Health Security PhD track within the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering.
Dr. Sell's work focuses on improving public health policy and practice in order to reduce the health impacts of disasters and terrorism. Her primary research interests focus on health security: the broad intersection of public health and national security. She studies past responses to public health emergencies to discover ways to improve future preparedness and response. From terrorism to pandemics and natural disasters, she employs mixed methods and multidisciplinary approaches to examine how the public, practitioners, and policymakers prepare for and respond to public health emergencies. In turn, she works to build the evidence base to advance policies and practices to minimize impacts of emergent threats. Though seemingly distinct, these topics are all linked by crosscutting preparedness and response needs critical to the improvement of the field of health security.
A hallmark of her work is the discovery of scientifically rigorous results while simultaneously interfacing with policymakers, public health practitioners, and the general public to translate research findings into actionable and evidence-based practices. Dr. Sell works collaboratively and purposefully to translate and disseminate findings and recommendations to target audiences in meaningful ways, such as engaging in collaborative work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to improve public communication or codeveloping Event 201, an immersive pandemic scenario to engage new stakeholders, such as the private sector, in pandemic preparedness.
Dr. Sell has led several projects focused on improving responses to emerging outbreaks. These include efforts to understand and find solutions for misinformation during highly feared infectious disease outbreaks and to use the wisdom of the crowd through an infectious disease prediction platform that develops forecasts about infectious disease outcomes. Another project, developed with Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering collaborators, sought to improve understanding of the health impacts and public health response priorities for longer-term electrical power outages.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Sell worked on a range of projects to help improve the US response to the outbreak. She provided input on research around the reopening of K-12 schools, advised the design of safe sports bubbles, and analyzed emerging information on the use of nonpharmaceutical interventions in the control of COVID-19. She also collaborated with the World Health Organization (WHO) on the development of the field of infodemiology in response to overwhelming amounts of disinformation and misinformation during COVID-19 and is leading research to improve understanding of better risk communication and management of misinformation during pandemics.
Dr. Sell has been principal investigator on several CDC-funded projects. She currently leads a project to improve trust in public health preparedness and response in the context of an environment of misinformation. She led a mixed-method approach using the Zika virus outbreak as a case study to understand more about how public health communication practices can be strengthened to improve public understanding, acceptance, and response during future infectious disease outbreaks. Another project investigated how decisions on Ebola policies were made at the US state level and what factors beyond CDC guidelines played the most significant roles in shaping state and local policy.
Dr. Sell also led several research projects to provide strategic recommendations regarding the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment process and the Chemical and Biological Defense Division in the US Department of Homeland Security. In addition, she conducts research and analysis of the funding and management of civilian biodefense, radiological/nuclear defense, and chemical defense programs in the US government, providing an accounting of federal funding on a yearly basis.
Her other research efforts focus on public health and resilience at a local level, evaluating local responses to recent outbreaks, local public health needs for community engagement, and local capabilities and needs. She co-led the COPEWELL project(link is external) , a system dynamics model and toolkit to improve community resilience to disasters. Dr. Sell coauthored the Rad Resilient City Preparedness Checklist, which provides cities and their neighbors with actions to save lives in the event of a nuclear detonation.
Prior to joining the Center in 2009, Dr. Sell was a professional athlete. She was a member of the USA national swim team for 8 years and served as captain for 6 USA national swim teams. In 2004, she broke the world record in the 100 breaststroke (Short Course Meters) and earned a silver medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
Dr. Sell completed her PhD at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management, where she was a Sommer Scholar. Her dissertation work focused on public policy responses to emerging epidemics and, specifically, how the media and policy intertwined in the case of Ebola and the health consequences of these policy actions. She received a BA in human biology and an MA in anthropological sciences from Stanford University. In 2005, she was a Rhodes Scholar finalist.
Threat Net: A Metagenomic Surveillance Network for Biothreat Detection and Early Warning (link is external)
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Senior Grants & Contract Analyst
- Senior Grants & Contracts Analyst
Mr. O'Keefe is the Senior Grants and Contracts Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. He works on the financial and administrative aspects of proposals and management of sponsored projects, non-sponsored accounts, and projects funded by gift agreements. In addition, he works with the finance team to handle the day-to-day operations of the Center.
Mr. O'Keefe has worked with nonprofits, including federally qualified health centers and higher education organizations, performing duties such as financial analysis, medical billing, and process improvement for funds management.
He has a Master of Finance degree with specialization in project management from Colorado State University, where he focused on managing complex projects and financial forecasting. He also holds a BS in finance from the University of Maryland.
Ms. Osasah is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering (Health Security Track) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interest is in health security with a focus on the impact of climate change on the environmental and occupational risks of infectious diseases among marginalized populations. Her current interest is in assessing the risk of vector borne diseases among migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the US.
Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Ms. Osasah worked at Public Health Ontario as a sub-section Epidemiologist Lead during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, Ms. Osasah worked at the NYU Langone Medical Center and at the Florida Department of Health during the Zika epidemic. Ms. Osasah holds an MPH in epidemiology from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Job Titles:
- Support Staff Member
- Senior Administrative Coordinator
Ms. Gnezdilova is a Senior Administrative Coordinator to faculty and analysts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She books travel and manages calendar schedules in addition to other administrative duties.
Prior to joining the Center in November 2022, Ms. Gnezdilova had a varied background of experience in customer service, order entry, and administrative support. Originally from Ukraine, she received a BM from the University of North Florida, School of Music, and a MM in vocal performance from the Johns Hopkins University, Peabody Institute.