Dan Eisenman is Executive Director of Biosafety Services at Advarra, a large clinical research compliance company. Dan heads a commercial IBC with over 1,000 clinical and basic science research sites across North America. Prior to joining Advarra Dan was the Biosafety Officer at the Medical University of South Carolina and UNC Chapel Hill. Dan holds a PhD in molecular biology and immunology, various biosafety certifications (RBP, SM(NRCM), CBSP) and a Regulatory Affairs Pharmaceuticals certificate from the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.
Gary Fujimoto, MD, is currently an Occupational Medicine consultant in private practice in Los Altos, California, working with a variety of high technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical research groups both nationally and internationally.
Gary was formerly Program Director, Occupational Medicine Department, Health Care Division, Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, and on the Active Medical Staff, Department of Emergency Medicine (Surgery), Stanford University School of Medicine.
Gary was twice honored with an Excellence in teaching award from Stanford University School of Medicine.
He served as the principal medical consultant for biological and chemical exposures at Stanford University for over 20 years, and has served on the Institutional Biosafety Committees for several pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Gary also serves on the board of the Griffin Foundation, and has been involved with the occupational health colloquium since its beginning.
Betsy is currently a consultant providing health and safety expertise to the life sciences industry. An accomplished health and safety leader with 33 years of experience in the life sciences industry, she recently retired as Director of Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability (EHSS) at Amgen. Betsy is skilled at forming strong, sustainable relationships and securing consensus across an organization to advance environmental health and safety initiatives, including integrating environmental health and safety programs following mergers, acquisitions and internal reorganizations. In addition, she is an internationally-known biosafety expert with strong pandemic preparedness and response skills. Prior to joining Amgen, she was a consultant with Environmental Health & Engineering Inc., providing health and safety services to the life sciences industry with a focus on high-containment infectious disease laboratories and vaccine manufacturing. In 2005, Betsy was President of the American Biological Safety Association – International (ABSA) and has been active in ABSA for 31 years. She currently serves on the Emerging Infectious Disease and Accreditation Committees. She is a founding member of the New England Biological Safety Association (NEBSA). In 2000, she received the John H. Richardson Special Recognition Award from ABSA, for service to the Training and Education Committee. ABSA awarded her the Edward J. Hanel Jr. Presidential Award in 2019 for outstanding contributions to ABSA and the field of biosafety.
For over 30 years, Michelle Kom Gochnour has focused her career on developing and providing occupational health and safety services in the areas of academia, government, private industry, and the military. This work has involved collaborations with other professionals to improve processes and ensure safe work environments and decrease risk to workers. She earned her master’s degree in nursing with a specialty in occupational and environmental health nursing from the University of Washington. Currently, Michelle holds the position of the Senior Occupational Health and Safety Consultant for Research at Seattle Children’s Hospital where she is part of the Environmental Health and Safety team for four laboratory research buildings, including a BSL3 facility. She serves on several institutional biosafety committees (IBCs), Children’s institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC), and is current president of the Northwest Health, Environmental and Laboratory Professionals (NW HELP) group. Michelle loves a good risk assessment discussion and is driven to constantly seek to decrease risk through occupational health and safety mitigation strategies.
Dr. Gigi Gronvall is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has led national and international efforts to improve biosafety and biosecurity policies, focusing on the occupational health of laboratory workers. She is currently a member of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) which advises the US State Department, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee (NExTRAC). From 2009-2010, she served as the Science Advisor for the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. Dr. Gronvall received a B.S. in biology from Indiana University, Bloomington and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Victoria Hall serves as the Executive Director of The Raptor Center and as the Redig Endowed Faculty Chair in Raptor and Ecosystem Health at the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She comes from a strong background working at the intersection of human, animal, and environmental health, coming most recently from the Smithsonian Institution where she served as the Veterinary Epidemiologist for the National Zoo and as a Public Health Officer for the Smithsonian Institution’s COVID-19 response. Dr. Hall formerly served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, responding to infectious disease outbreaks in human health, including outbreaks involving: multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, measles virus, and Zika virus. With experience working with organizations including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Hall is passionate about working on complex ecosystem health challenges on a global scale and engaging stakeholders and partners of all levels. She is diplomate in the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine and received her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and her Masters of Science (Veterinary Preventive Medicine) from Mississippi State University.
Philip Harber is a professor of public health at the University of Arizona. He recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award from ACOEM. He has published over 200 research and medical papers and is the senior editor of the forthcoming book, “Occupational Health in Higher Education and Research Institutions”. He previously was professor of Medicine and Family Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, chief of the Division of Occupational-Environmental Medicine, and director of the occupational-environmental medicine residency. He has served as chair of the NIOSH/CDC Study Section (IRG), vice chair of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) for preventive medicine RRC, Board of directors of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM), and a member of several IOM committees. His clinical and consulting expertise includes occupational respiratory diseases, occupational toxicology, and occupational ergonomics. He also served as director of the UA Occupational Health Office and medical director for occupational health (of employees).
Bio Coming Soon.
T Warner Hudson MD FACOEM FAAFP is Associate Clinical Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health at UC Irvine. Prior to this he was Medical Director of Occupational and Employee Health at UCLA for the Health System and campus there. He has years of experience designing, leading and implementing occupational health strategies and programs for research and animal workers, health care personnel, travel and field work medicine. He was a voting member of the UCLA IBC for 7 years and has published and presented numerous articles, and sessions on related biosafety issues. He has been clinically active in this area as well for over 40 years and was President of ACOEM 2011-2012..
Dr. Isaacs is an infectious disease specialist and a tenured Associate Professor of Medicine at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania where he also serves as Associate Dean for Animal Research. He received his medical degree from Yale University School of Medicine and completed his residency at Temple University Hospital. He did a research fellowship in molecular virology studying poxviruses at the NIH in the Laboratory of Viral Diseases and completed a clinical ID fellowship at the Tufts-New England Medical Center.
Dr. Isaacs has been a poxvirologist for over 30 years. His laboratory has focused on using poxviruses as a model system to study viral proteins that are involved in viral pathogenesis, dissemination, and evasion of the host immune response. In collaboration with other labs at Penn, the lab has also been pursuing future generation subunit poxvirus vaccines using protein/adjuvant and mRNA/lipid nanoparticle platforms. Dr. Isaacs previously served as the poxvirus program project leader for the NIH-funded Middle Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence in Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases and organized the last International Poxvirus Symposium in July 2021. He has been serving as a subject matter expert for the ACIP Orthopoxvirus Vaccine Work Group
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Dr. Isakari is the Medical Director for the UC San Diego Center of Occupational & Environmental Medicine (COEM). She has extensive clinical and leadership experience directing occupational medicine clinics and delivering clinical services to employers in virtually all industrial sectors, including biotech/life sciences/technology, public entity and healthcare. In particular, for local biotech clients, she has developed customized occupational medicine solutions and provides medical directorship for Salk Institute and La Jolla Institute.
Dr. Isakari is board-certified in Occupational & Environmental Medicine and a fellow of the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine (FACOEM). She is certified as a Medical Review Officer (MROCC) for drug and alcohol testing and Professional Supervisor in hearing conservation (CAOHC). Lastly, she serves on the UC San Diego Institutional Biosafety Committee and is the past chair of the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) Safety Leadership Council
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Ellyn Segal received a B.S. from McGill University in Biology/Genetics and a Ph.D. in Genetics from Stony Brook University, doing research at Cold Spring Harbor Labs in N. Y. and Scripps Research Foundation in San Diego, CA. She continued her education with a Post-doctoral position in Microbiology and Immunology at UCSF. From there she moved to Stanford University, where she was a post-doctoral scholar and Sr. Research Scientist working on bacterial pathogenesis and cellular microbiology. In 2001 she moved into her current position as Biosafety & Biosecurity Manager for Stanford University. Dr. Segal is interested in the intersection of new technologies and issues with Biosafety.
Mary Ann Sondrini, EdM, has been the Director of the Eagleson Institute, a nonprofit foundation with a mission to globally promote the principles and practices of health and safety in the life sciences community since its inception in 1989. Her responsibilities include overseeing the development and promotion of all Institute activities, including seminars, conferences, DVDs and global mentoring projects. Being a strong believer in the benefits of interactive learning, all programs implement a variety of instructional strategies to keep the learners engaged. Mary Ann has a degree in biology from Williams College and a graduate degree in education with a focus in curriculum development from Harvard School of Education. She has taught numerous courses in the development and presentation of training programs. In 1997, she was the recipient of the Everett Hanel, Jr. Presidential Award given by the American Biological Safety Association for her extensive contributions to that organization.
Gregg M. Stave, MD, JD, MPH is a consultant in Occupational Medicine and Corporate Health and is also Consulting Professor in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. He spent 15 years as a corporate medical director for GlaxoSmithKline, based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, most
recently as Director, Strategic Health Planning.
During his years at Glaxo, the organization received numerous internal and external awards including the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) Corporate Health Achievement Award, the Koop Award, and the Institute for Health and Productivity Management Award.
Dr. Stave received his undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in Life Sciences. He received both his MD and JD from Duke University and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Preventive Medicine (Occupational Medicine) and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Preventive Medicine, and ACOEM.
Dr. Stave served as a member of the Board of Directors of ACOEM for 6 years and was the founding Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Occupational and Environmental Health Foundation, serving for 15 years. He served as Chair of the Duke Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency Advisory Committee for more than 20 years and as Chair of the Board of Directors for Prevention Partners for 8 years. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the NC Alliance for Health and previously served on the Board of the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC.
Dr. Stave is co-editor of the award-winning Physical and Biological Hazards of the Workplace, currently in the third edition. He also co-edited the State-of-the-Art Review in Occupational Medicine on the Pharmaceutical Industry. He is the author of numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles.
Dr. Stave lives in Chapel Hill, NC with his wife, Dr. Christine M. Hunt.
Maureen Thompson BSN, RN, COHN-S, RBP is the Assistant Director of Environmental Health and Safety at Emory University and Environmental Health and Safety Officer (EHSO) at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center (NPRC). Her responsibilities include: guidance and oversight for regulatory compliance, environmental health and safety training, BSL/ABSL-3 containment oversight, safety inspections, hazard identification, hazard monitoring and risk assessments. She is also responsible for the follow-up and investigations related to student, volunteer and employee injuries and exposures as well, as the workers compensation program. Prior to working in research Maureen worked as a Neonatal Nurse at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Early career experiences include work in clinical laboratories and pediatric phlebotomy. Maureen has worked in the field of Environmental Health and Safety for more than 25 years, first as the Safety Officer at Children’s Health Care of Atlanta and then as the EHSO at the Yerkes NPRC. She continues to work with numerous agencies and research facilities to address research related health and safety concerns and development of comprehensive safety programs. She is a voting member of the Emory University Institutional Biosafety and Research Safety Committees and is the EHSO representative on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.
Jim Welch served 19 years as the executive director of the Elizabeth R Griffin Research Foundation, a US-based non-profit organization that works nationally and globally promoting biosafety and biosecurity in fostering global health security. Upon his retirement in 2018, the Foundation was transitioned to the Elizabeth R Griffin Program at the Center of Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical School where he now serves as an Affiliate. He is a member and was the originating chair of the steering group of the Global Health Security Agenda Consortium (GHSAC), was the first NGO member of the Global Health Security Agenda Steering Group and is on the International Working Group on Strengthening the Culture of Biosafety, Biosecurity, and Responsible Conduct in the Life Sciences. He has been associated with the Joint External Evaluation International Alliance (JEE), the OIE Consultation Group on Sustainable Biosafety and Biosecurity, and served for over a decade on the advisory board of the National Biosafety and Biocontainment Training Program at the US National Institutes of Health. He served on the governing councils of the International Federation of Biosafety Associations (IFBA) and ABSA International. He was as a named member of the Law Enforcement and Veterinary International Conference at INTERPOL, an external advisor for the Duke University Infectious Disease Response Training Program, and a member of the Global Health Security Roundtable. He was the 2011 recipient of the John H Richardson Award of ABSA International and is an honorary member of the Association of Primate Veterinarians and the International Biosafety Working Group. He currently is on the advisory board of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council and is the elected president of the Kingsport, Tennessee Board of Education. He has been a key speaker, instructor, moderator and panelist at professional and governmental conferences, seminars, universities and private companies around the world.
