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Supporting Agencies
Personnel
The Principal Investigators of CAMRA and Some Highlights of Their Expertise
Many of the investigators in CAMRA have previously worked together and published together in various fields of microbiology, environmental ecology, risk assessment and disease transmission.
Quicklinks to Primary Investigators: |
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Dr.
Rose, co-director (MSU) has worked with Dr. Haas since 1988
and is a co-editor along with Dr. Haas of the only book on MRA, Quantitative
Microbial Risk Assessment, (John Wiley and Sons, NY, NY, 1999).
She has been involved with integrated microbial risk assessment models
with Drs. Casman and Small and has worked with Dr. Gerba on MRA as
well as on methods and transport assessment for bacteria, parasites
and viruses. She has been involved with EPA and development of the
methods and data for support of various rule making including the Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule. Her recent collaborations
have examined zoonotic pathogens with Dr. Carole Bolin and Biochip
development with Dr. Syed Hashsham. -
Dr. Haas, co-director (Drexel)
was one of the first scientists to examine dose-response data sets
for microbial agents spread through environmental means and implement
a quantitative risk framework following the NAS. He was the primary
editor behind the book on Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment.
He has interacted with EPA in regard to disinfection and rules for
development of the Surface Water Treatment Rule. He has examined outbreak
data, inhalation, ingestion and contact exposures. He has recently
published on dose-response modeling for anthrax. Dr. Haas has been
a member of several National Research Council committees dealing with
bioterrorism. He served on a panel to review the EPA research strategy
for homeland security protection of water and wastewater infrastructure
He is currently serving on a committee to define :"how clean
is safe" following clean up from a bioterrorist event.
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Dr. Bolin is doctor of veterinary medicine. She
has worked specifically withselect agents and studied zoonotic disease
transmission for over a decade. She has examined emerging zoonosis
and patterns of infection and the external conditions involved with
the spread of disease amongst different animal populations. She has
collaborated with Dr. Rose on the subject of waterborne zoonoses. -
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Dr. Casman (CMU) is the Co-PI
for current NSF project: "Integrating Risk Analysis and Risk Communication"
section on Pneumonic/Bubonic Plague. She has developed an integrated
risk model for cryptosporidiosis outbreaks and (with others) a bounding
analysis technique for supplementing risk assessment. She is the PI
on a CDC project: The Potential of Next-Generation Microbiological
Diagnostics to Improve Bioterrorism Detection Speed; and a Co-I of
a MacArthur Fund grant to study bioattacks, detection, and response
She is involved in an NSF project on SENSORS: Placement and Operation
of an Environmental Sensor Network to Facilitate Decision Making Regarding
Drinking Water Quality and Security. -
Dr. Choi has placed a primary research emphasis
on fundamentals in transport phenomena and environmental and biological
engineering applications. He has been involved in the development
of risk models for the contamination of produce by irrigation of water
contaminated with pathogens. He has also studied the survival of pathogens
in soil, water, on produce and biosolids. Dr. Choi's current research
interests include (i) the fate of microorganisms in water distribution
systems, (ii) computational fluid dynamics and numerical simulation
of transport phenomena, and (iii) the dispersion of biological agents
in water systems and development of prediction models using artificial
neural network. -
Dr. Eisenberg (UM) is an
expert in the area of microbial risks and study of disease transmission
models for water. He has collaborated with Drs. Rose Haas and Dr.
Koopman in the past, in addition to being involved with the scientists
from University of California-Berkely and the University of Michigan.
His current research interests include the epidemiology of waterborne
pathogens and malaria. He has been involved in examining impacts and
approaches for controls for environmentally transmitted agents and
serves as an advisor to both the national and international communities
of public health professionals. -
Dr. Gerba (UA) is well known for his research on
virus transport in water. He has been involved in survival and transport
studies; point-of-use (POU) disinfection, prototype devices for UV
disinfection. He has been involved in methods development and assessment
for microbial detection in water and quantifying dispersion of biological
agents in biosolid aerosols and domestic environments. He is PI of
the Environmental Dispersion of Biological Agents in Sewer systems
study for DARPA and the Alternatives for chlorine disinfection of
water supplies study for the Dept. of Homeland Security SARPA He is
also studying the dispersion of spores in drinking water distribution
systems. -
Dr. Gurian (Drexel) has developed integrated model
of exposure, risk, and impacts of alternative regulatory options for
multiple drinking water contaminants and is Co-PI of an NSF-sponsored
study of risk management for extreme events affecting the U.S.-Mexico
border-crossing infrastructure. He is currently involved in two studies
of the public perception of technological risks, one addressing the
perceived risk of wastewater reuse and one addressing the perceived
risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, and a third study concerning Bayesian
hierarchical modeling of the occurrence of contaminants in drinking
water. -
Dr. Hashsham (MSU) is a civil and environmental
engineer who specializes in the development of bio-molecular tools
for the assessment of environmental contamination. He has been awarded
an NIH grant to address validation experimentation of a biochip for
Class A agents and is the Co-investigator on a project for the development
of a biochip for water funded by EPA. He has been collaborating with
the Center for Food Safety and Toxicology on the characterization
of enteric bacteria and has established research program with Dr.
Rose in water. He is an expert on the design and validation of molecular
tools including microarray technology. -
Dr. Koopman (UM) is an infectious disease expert
who has worked in the medical arena on pediatric disease such as the
spread of rotavirus in developing and developed countries. In the
last decade he has built a program on using mathematical and statistical
approaches to the study and description of epidemiology. He has worked
directly with EPA on population modeling and has address a number
of select A agents. He has collaborated previously with Dr. Eisenberg,
Dr. Haas and Dr. Rose. -
Dr. Nicas (UCB) is an industrial hygienist working
with aerosols in particular. He develops mathematical models of contaminant
emission and dispersion in air and probability models of airborne
infectious disease transmission. Based on risk analysis, he has evaluated
respiratory protection against airborne pathogens used for bioterrorism.
He has collaborated with Dr. Eisenberg and other scientists at the
University of California, Berkeley. -
Dr. Small (CMU) is a member of EPA SAB, Environmental
Modeling Committee; FIFRA SAP; EPA BOSC (1996-2002). He is an elected
Fellow of Society for Risk Analysis (SRA); Associated Editor of Environmental
Science & Technology; Co-Editor of:McDaniels and Small. 2004.
Risk Analysis and Society: An Interdisciplinary Characterization of
the Field. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Co-PI for current
NSF project: SENSORS: Placement and Operation of an Environmental
Sensor Network to Facilitate Decision Making Regarding Drinking Water
Quality and Security. Co-author of: Ramaswami, Milford, and Small.
Integrated Environmental Modeling: Pollutant Transport, Fate, and
Risk in the Environment, Wiley, in press. -
Dr. Weber
(Drexel) specializes in studying the design and implementation of
computational intelligence methods (e.g., Case-Based Reasoning, Fuzzy
Set Theory, Information Extraction, Machine Learning) to solve
knowledge management problems in a wide variety of domains (e.g., Law,
Military, Nutrition, Medical, Finance). From 99-01, she worked with the
Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence (NCARAI) in
the Naval Research Laboratory (in Washington, DC) funded by ONR grants,
where she developed knowledge-based methods for improving the efficacy
of repository-based knowledge management systems, such as the Navy
Lessons-learned System. Since 2007, she is an Associate Professor and
Director of Undergraduate Programs at the iSchool at Drexel University, where she teaches courses related to Computational Intelligence and Knowledge Management.