GLOBAL HEALTH

GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH AND BIOSECURITY

Medicine focuses on the health of individuals. Public health is population health. My work over the years has been focused at the intersection of biomedical technologies and public health interventions to benefit people individually and at the community health level.

  • Currently working to advance chembio threat detection technologies for public health and environmental biosecurity
  • Developed pioneering gene-edited environmental clean-up systems for emerging contaminants of concern (COCs) [e.g., 1,4-dioxane] (Intrexon)
  • Advanced genetically engineered mosquitoes for use in mosquito-borne infectious disease vector control (Intrexon, Oxitec)
  • Performed technology analysis on gene editing, genetic engineering, and cloning technologies used in our food systems (Intrexon)
  • Piloted pioneering HIV CD4 mobile testing interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa to ensure efficacy of HIV anti-retroviral therapies (ART) in rural low resource settings (St. Gabriel's Hospital Malawi)
  • Advanced medical countermeasures for biosecurity: sensors, diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines (Gen-Probe, Nanogen-Vectrant, Intrexon)


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ACADEMIC RESEARCH

My work has been concentrated at the intersection of biotechnology and health interventions. Throughout my career I have leveraged my biomedical, environmental, and life sciences knowledge to address significant risks to the public health. My academic training is in biology, biomedical research, and public health epidemiology.

I am focused on performing epidemiological and risk analyses to better understand targets for intervention, resource requirements, and methods for analyzing data to inform next steps developing and deploying technologies in the advancement of environmental and public health interventions.

Academic Research Institutions
  • George Mason University, Department of Global and Community Health | master of public health graduate studies in epidemiology (pending program completion)
  • UCSD Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Marine Biology Research Division | independent research: environmental and extremophilic microbiology applications for molecular tools, medicines, and bioremediation
  • The Scripps Research Institute, Department of Immunology | immunology basic research focused on virology, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease during undergraduate studies
  • University of California San Diego, Department of Biology | undergraduate studies in biology

Current Fields of Study
  • Molecular epidemiology
  • Environmental and medical microbiology
  • Risk analysis

Topics of Interest
  • Environmental health and biosecurity
  • New technology risk analysis and risk management
  • Chemical and biological threat sensor technologies for detection and quantitative measurements
  • Medical diagnostics and quantitative neutralizing antibody measurements
  • Soil, groundwater and surface water quality measurements
  • Remediation and mitigation of environmental chemical contaminants of concern in soil and water [e.g., 1,4-dioxane, PFAS]
  • Infectious disease vector control using genetically engineered insects versus insecticides and other technologies

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