 Rita Colwell, Ph.D., is Chairman of
Canon US Life Sciences, Inc. and Distinguished University Professor both at
the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her interests are focused on global
infectious diseases, water, and health, and she is currently developing an
international network to address emerging infectious diseases and water
issues, including safe drinking water for both the developed and developing
world. Dr. Colwell served as the 11th Director of the National Science
Foundation, 1998-2004. In her capacity as NSF Director, she served as
Co-chair of the Committee on Science of the National Science and Technology
Council. One of her major interests include K-12 science and
mathematics education, graduate science and engineering education and the
increased participation of women and minorities in science and
engineering. Dr. Colwell has held many advisory positions in the U.S.
Government, nonprofit science policy organizations, and private foundations,
as well as in the international scientific research community. She is a
nationally-respected scientist and educator, and has authored or co-authored
16 books and more than 700 scientific publications. She produced the
award-winning film, Invisible Seas, and has served on editorial boards of
numerous scientific journals. Dr. Colwell is a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, Royal Swedish
Academy of Science, and the National Academy of Science.
 Richard Spinrad, Ph.D., is the
Assistant Administrator for NOAA. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from
the Johns Hopkins University and then earned an M.S. in physical
oceanography and a Ph.D. in marine geology in 1982 from Oregon State
University. He is the President-Elect of The Oceanography Society and served
as Editor in Chief of Oceanography magazine. Spinrad also served on the
faculty of the U.S. Naval Academy and George Mason University. His
experiences include working as a research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory
for Ocean Sciences, serving as the President of Sea Tech, Inc., managing
oceanographic research at the Office of Naval Research (including serving as
the Navy’s first manager of its ocean optics program), and directing
research and education for the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and
Education (CORE). Spinrad has published more than 50 scientific articles, is
the editor of a textbook on ocean optics and several special issues of
marine science journals. He has co-authored or contributed to many
fundamental documents that impact the oceanographic community such as a
report by CORE entitled, "Oceans 2000: Bridging the Millennia", which he
co-authored with Admiral James Watkins, and which served as the guiding
document for the establishment of the National Oceanographic Partnership
Program (NOPP). Dr Spinrad is the recipient of a Presidential Rank Award, as
well as the Distinguished Civilian Service Award, the highest award given to
a civilian by the U.S. Department of Navy. Spinrad also serves as the United
States permanent representative to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic
Commission of UNESCO, and co-chairs the White House Joint Subcommittee on
Ocean Science and Technology.
 Andrew Comrie, Ph.D., is Professor of
Geography and Regional Development at the University of Arizona. He is a
climatologist specializing in the geographic aspects of atmospheric
environmental issues, and he has published widely in specialized and
interdisciplinary international journals. His expertise includes climate
impact assessment, applied climatology, synoptic climatology, urban and
regional air pollution, climate variability and change, climate and health,
multivariate statistical climate analysis, and computerized map-pattern
recognition and classification techniques. Dr. Comrie is currently
investigating summer and winter climate variability in the Southwest United
States, climatological and human factors influencing air pollution at local
and regional scales, links between climate and disease, climate and
wildfire, and new techniques for mapping climate and air quality
information. His work has been funded by NSF, EPA, NOAA, NASA, and state and
local agencies. He serves, or has served, on numerous national and
international professional committees and editorial boards, and he is
currently American Editor of the International Journal of Climatology.
 Duane Gubler is Professor of Tropical
Medicine and Medical Microbiology at the University of Hawaii School of
Medicine and Director of the Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and
Infectious Diseases at the University of Hawaii. His primary interest has
been dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever. He was former Director of the
Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, National Center for Infectious
Diseases, CDC in Ft. Collins Colodaro. He has served as a frequent
consultant to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the WHO, the
Canadian International Development Research Center, U.S. Agency for
International Development, the Rockefeller Foundation, the South Pacific
Commission, the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, the Electric Power Research Institute,
and numerous national governments around the world. Dr. Gubler has over 235
publications on every aspect of vector-borne diseases. He is Past-President
of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and has received
numerous academic, professional and community service awards.
 Gregory Glass, Ph.D., is Professor of Infectious Disease Ecology in the Dept. of Molecular
Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health. His research interests primarily involve studies of the maintenance
and transmission dynamics of infectious agents, especially zoonotic agents.
His work includes both laboratory and field research of animal reservoir and
arthropod vector populations, as well as epidemiologic studies of affected
human populations. The goal is to better understand the reasons for the
persistence and emergence of infectious diseases.
Recent research has focused on rodent-borne viruses (Hantavirus, Hepatitis
E-like virus), bacteria (Leptospira, Borrelia), and rickettsiae (Ehrlichia).
In addition to traditional field and laboratory studies his uses geographic
information systems (GIS) to study environmental correlates of disease risk.
Much of his current focus involves developing integrated statistical spatial
models for disease risk assessment. His GIS laboratory coordinates the study
of anticipated geographic changes in infectious diseases for the Johns
Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.
 David Rogers, D. Phil., is
Professor in the Dept. of Zoology at University of Oxford where he heads the
TALA Research Group, an international team that works on the application of
remotely sensed data to describe the distribution and intensity of diseases
transmitted by intermediate hosts or vectors, and the distribution of
individual species and areas of biodiversity in tropical regions. He has
written extensively on climate and vector-borne diseases, especially malaria
in Africa, African trypanosomiasis, and tick-borne diseases of humans and
livestock. He has coauthored a book entitled Remote Sensing and Geographic
Information Systems in Epidemiology (Academic Press). He has served as
consultant to WHO, FAO, UNDP, NASA, and many other international
organizations.
 Dáithí Stone, D. Phil., is a
Research Associate in the Departments of Physics and Zoology at the
University of Oxford. His physics interests lie in the detection and
attribution of climate change, going beyond the global long term trend to
spatial and temporal scales of more direct relevance for impacts and
adaptation issues. This has grown into an interest in the attribution issue
in epidemiological impacts in relation to climate variability and change. He
also holds a teaching appointment at the University of the West Indies.
 Cecile Viboud, Ph.D., is a research
scientist in the Division of Epidemiology and International Studies, Fogarty
International Center, NIH, Bethesda MD, USA. She was a graduate fellow at
the French National Institute of Health in Paris and received a Ph.D. in
mathematical epidemiology from the University of Paris in 2003. Her research
focuses on the spatial and temporal patterns of influenza and rotavirus
epidemics, with specific interests in mortality studies, strain variations
and seasonality. Current projects include spatial transmission of influenza
and rotavirus in the US, changes in seasonality of influenza with latitude
and relation with climate, transmissibility and impact of epidemic and
pandemic influenza.
 Rodolfo Acuna-Soto, M.D., D. Sc. is Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology at the
Medical School of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. He received
an M.D. degree form Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and holds M.Sc.
and D.Sc.degrees in Tropical Public Health from Harvard University. For the
last twelve years Dr. Acuna-Soto has been collecting information for the
spatial and temporal reconstruction of the major epidemics in Mexico in the
last 1500 years. The work is based in the systematic review of archives and
libraries throughout Mexico, United States and Canada. Among his major
interests are a series of drought-associated epidemics of hemorrhagic fevers
that caused massive mortality in Mexico from 1545 to 1815, and were probably
also responsible of the collapse of the Mayan culture. His research involves
active collaborations with dendroclimatologists, zoologists, hydrobiologists,
archeologists, historians and infectious diseases specialists. His work has
been funded by the European Community, National Council of Science and
Technology (Mexico) and local agencies. back to
Forum on Climate and Disease
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