Committee on Evaluation of the Presumptive Disability Decision-Making Process for Veterans

BIOSKETCHES OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS

CHAIR

Jonathan M. Samet, M.D., M.S. is a professor and the Chair of the Department of Epidemiology of The Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Samet also has joint Johns Hopkins’ appointments in the Department of Medicine and the Oncology Center, serves as the Director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control and as the Co-Director for the Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute. Before coming to Johns Hopkins, he was a professor and Chief of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division in the Department of Medicine of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. His research has emphasized the assessment of health effects of environmental pollutants using epidemiological approaches. His work addressing indoor and outdoor air pollution and occupational exposures, including asbestos and radon, has made use of risk assessment methods as a tool for translation of scientific findings into policy. He has published more than 15 books and monographs, more than 130 chapters in books, and more than 240 peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Samet received his M.D. from the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry and his M.S. from the Harvard School of Public Health. He interned at the University of Kentucky Medical Center and then served in the U.S Army as an anesthesiologist at Gorgas Hospital (Balboa Heights, Canal Zone) from 1971–1973. Following his military service, Dr. Samet completed his residency in Medicine at the University of New Mexico and then completed a research and clinical fellowship at Harvard Medical School’s Channing Laboratory. He is board certified in internal medicine and the subspecialty of pulmonary medicine. Dr. Samet was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1997 (Section 9) and has served as a member and Chair of numerous committees for The National Academies. He currently chairs the Committee on Asbestos: Selected Health Effects and the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology.  In addition, he is a member of the Committee on Science, Technology and Law.

MEMBERS

Margaret A. Berger, J.D. is a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School.  Professor Berger’s research interests focus on scientific evidentiary issues, and she has made outstanding contributions to the field of post-admission legal education by developing new approaches to the judicial treatment of scientific evidence. She has authored numerous briefs, articles, chapters in books and books which address the topic of the admissibility and interpretation of scientific evidence. Professor Berger holds a J. D. from Columbia University School of Law. She has held membership positions on The National Academies’ Committees on Tagging Smokeless and Black Powder and the Committee on DNA Technology in Forensic Science: An Update. Professor Berger is currently a member of The National Academies’ Committee on Science, Technology, and Law and a Co-chair of the Committee on Alternative Models to Daubert Standards.

Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, Ph.D., M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Bibbins-Domingo is also an attending physician at San Francisco General Hospital. Her research interests include the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease, race and gender health and healthcare disparities, and the quality of chronic heart failure care. She has conducted research on risk factors for heart failure and cardiovascular disease, including diabetes, impaired kidney function, and high blood pressure and research on effectiveness of screening and diagnostic tests for cardiovascular disease and has published in these areas. Dr. Bibbins-Domingo received her Ph.D. in biochemistry, her M.D. and her Masters of Clinical Research from the University of California, San Francisco.

Eric G. Bing, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Drew University of Medicine and Science. In addition, Dr. Bing is the Director of The Collaborative Public Health AIDS Research Center and the Drew Center for AIDS Research, Education and Services (Drew CARES). His research interests include mental health treatment, HIV prevention and AIDS research in civilian and military settings.  He is well published in these areas. Dr. Bing received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, his M.P.H. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) School of Public Health. He completed his psychiatric training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.  Dr. Bing served as a member of The National Academies’ Ryan White CARE Act committee.

Bernard D. Goldstein, M.D. is the former Dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health and remains active as a professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. Dr. Goldstein’s research interests include risk assessment, toxicology, workplace hazards, internal medicine, preventive medicine, occupational and environmental medicine, and environmental health policy. He has conducted research on air quality and leukemia and various aspects of public health decision-making. Dr. Goldstein was the founder and former Director of the Environmental and Occupational Sciences Institute at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Dr. Goldstein also served as Assistant Administrator for Research and Development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He received his M.D. from the New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Goldstein was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1991 (Section 9) and has served as a member and Chair of numerous committees for The National Academies which address subjects including risk assessment methodology, exposure to radioactive materials, and biological markers. He currently serves as a member of the Board on Health Sciences Policy, as the chair of the Committee to Review the NIOSH Hearing Loss Research Program, and as a member of the Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research and Medicine.

Melissa A. McDiarmid, M.D., M.P.H., D.A.B.T. is a professor of Medicine and Director of the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Occupational Health Program.  Dr. McDiarmid also directs the Department of Veterans Affairs surveillance program for veterans exposed to depleted uranium.  Previously, Dr. McDiarmid was Director of the Office of Occupational Medicine for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in Washington, D.C.  Prior to OSHA, she was an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.  Principal career interests for Dr. McDiarmid have been the study of health effects and toxicology of metals and environmental reproductive and developmental hazards.  She has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters on various occupational and environmental medicine topics related to healthcare workers, medical surveillance and management, reproductive health and occupational cancers.  Dr. McDiarmid received her M.D. from the University of Maryland, her M.P.H. from The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health where she also completed her fellowship training in Occupational Medicine.  She is board certified in Internal Medicine, Occupational Medicine and Toxicology.  Dr. McDiarmid is serving as a Volunteer Scientific Consultant to IOM’s Committee on Evaluation of the Presumptive Disability Decision-Making Process for Veterans.

Guy H. McMichael III, J.D. is president of GHM Consulting which offers federal relations and management consulting advice.  Mr. McMichael served as a senior official in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for 30 years and provided advice and direction at the highest levels of VA in the development and execution of a complex array of programs administered by the agency.  During his tenure with VA, he served as Acting Under Secretary for Benefits, Acting Chief Information Officer, Acting Chief of Staff, Chief Judge of VA’s Board of Contract Appeals, VA General Counsel and head of Congressional Relations.  He also served as the agency’s designated Dispute Resolution Specialist.  Prior to joining VA, Mr. McMichael served as General Counsel for the United States Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs for six years.  Following his military service in the United States Army, he began his public service as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for the State of Indiana.  Mr. McMichael holds a J.D. from University of Michigan Law School.  He received the VA’s Exceptional Service Award on three separate occasions and was also a recipient of the VA’s Distinguished Career Award.

John R. Mulhausen, Ph.D., M.S., C.I.H. is the Manager of Corporate Industrial Hygiene for the 3M Company.  Dr. Mulhausen is responsible for the leadership of the Corporate Industrial Hygiene organization and oversight of its programs worldwide in a 21 billion dollar per year global manufacturing company. Prior to joining 3M, Dr. Mulhausen worked for the U.S. Army Environmental Hygiene Agency. Dr. Mulhausen also holds an Adjunct Assistant Professor position in the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. He has presented and published in the fields of exposure assessment, industrial hygiene and industrial hygiene statistics. He was one of the editors for the American Industrial Hygiene Association’s “A Strategy for Assessing and Managing Occupational Exposures.” Dr. Mulhausen is certified in the comprehensive practice of industrial hygiene and is a Fellow of the American Industrial Hygiene Association.

Richard Scheines, Ph.D. is a professor and the Head of the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University.  In addition, Dr. Scheines is a professor of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute as well as the Department of Machine Learning. Dr. Scheines’ research focuses on the relationship between causal structure and statistical evidence. His interests are especially involved in data collected by social and behavior science, which include variables that cannot be measured directly. Dr. Scheines has collaborated for more than two decades with statisticians and computer scientists on a project to characterize what can and cannot be learned about causal claims from statistical data in a variety of empirical settings, and to develop and implement algorithms for causal discovery. He has published extensively. Dr. Scheines received his Ph.D. and M.A. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Scheines was recently on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Food Marketing and the Diets of Children and Youth where specific cause and effect relationships were examined of marketing and its effects on children’s preferences, purchase requests, and diets.

Kenneth R. Still, Ph.D., M.S., M.B.A., F.A.T.S., C.I.H., C.S.P., C.H.M.M. is a retired U.S. Navy Captain in the Medical Service Corps.  Dr. Still served as the Senior Director of Safety and Occupational Health for the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii for the past 3 years. Previously, he was the officer in charge of the Navy’s Toxicology Research Program.  Dr. Still retired from the U.S. Navy in November 2005 and is currently the Scientific Director and toxicology consultant for Occupational Toxicology Associates, Inc. and chairs an Independent Toxicology Panel for an International corporation.  Dr. Still has held numerous adjunct faculty / associate professorships including the John Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii, and the Uniform Services University of Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland.  He held a visiting research scientist appointment at the Naval Health Research Center Environmental Health Effects Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio for several years. Dr. Still’s main research interests include human health risk assessment, exposure assessment and mechanistic toxicology. His research addresses the areas of neurobehavioral, reproductive, inhalation/respiratory, biochemical, and occupational toxicology.  He has more than 200 publications in the areas of his research. Dr. Still received his Ph.D. in chemical/physiological ecology from Oklahoma State University, his M.S. from Portland State University in the same field, and his M.B.A. from Chaminade University of Honolulu in financial management. Dr. Still holds certifications in the comprehensive practice of industrial hygiene, safety, hazardous materials management, and several environmental arenas. Dr. Still is a Fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences and the American Industrial Hygiene Association. He has served as a liaison on numerous committees for The National Academies which have addressed the topics of toxicology hazard evaluation, reproductive and developmental toxicants, and acute exposure guidelines. Dr. Still has also served on many working groups for governmental agencies. He received the Vice President Al Gore Hammer Award for Reinventing Government for work on the Environmental Protection Agency Acute Exposure Guidelines.

Duncan C. Thomas, Ph.D., is the Director of the Biostatistics Division within the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California and holds the Verna Richter Chair in Cancer Research. Dr. Thomas was Co-Director of the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center (funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) and is Director of its Study Design and Statistical Methods of Research Core. His research interests include the development of statistical methods in epidemiology, with special emphasis on cancer epidemiology, occupational and environmental health, and genetic epidemiology. He is also one of the senior investigators in the California Childrens Health Study, the only long-term cohort study of the chronic effects of air pollution in children.  He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles in these areas of research and is the author of Statistical Methods in Genetic Epidemiology (Oxford University Press, 2004). Dr. Thomas is a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and a past President of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society. Dr. Thomas received his Ph.D. in epidemiology and health from McGill University and his M.S. in mathematics from Stanford University. He has served as a member of The National Academies’ committees to review radioepidemiology tables and the biological effects of populations of exposures to low levels of ionizing radiation (BEIR V), and was a member of President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.

Sverre Vedal, M.D., M.Sc. is a professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program, at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Washington, Dr. Vedal worked as an academic pulmonologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and then at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Vedal is well published in the application of epidemiological methods to evaluating the health effects of air pollution and occupational lung disease, and is funded by National Institutes of Health in researching health effects of air pollution sources. Dr. Vedal received his M.D. from the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine and his M.Sc. in epidemiology from Harvard University. He is board certified in internal medicine and pulmonary medicine. Dr. Vedal is a member of the Review Committee of the Health Effects Institute in Boston, MA and a member of air pollution panels of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board.  Dr. Vedal served as a member of The National Academies’ committee addressing air quality management.

Allen J. Wilcox, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H. is a Senior Investigator in the Epidemiology Branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, where he served for 10 years as the Chief of the Epidemiology Branch. Dr. Wilcox’s research focuses on fertility, birth weight, and environmental teratogens with over 130 published peer-reviewed research articles. Dr. Wilcox received his M.D. from University of Michigan, M.P.H. in the Department of Maternal and Child Health and Ph.D. in the Department of Epidemiology from the School of Public Health at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is certified by the American Board of Preventive Medicine as a specialist in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine. Dr. Wilcox is the Editor-in-Chief of Epidemiology and has served as editor or on editorial boards of other epidemiological journals. He has been awarded the U.S. Public Health Service Meritorious Service Medal, and twice received the National Institutes of Health Director’s Award. Dr. Wilcox has served as the President of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and the American Epidemiological Society.

Scott L. Zeger, Ph.D. is the Hurley-Dorrier Professor of Biostatistics and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Zeger is jointly appointed to the Department of Epidemiology and served as the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. His research is on regression analysis for correlated responses. Dr. Zeger has focused in two areas: 1) when observations come in clusters, for example in longitudinal research, family studies in genetics or in sample surveys and 2) when a single time series is observed. His research has extended generalized linear models (logistic, linear, log-linear and survival models) to be applicable in these cases. Dr. Zeger has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and is co-author of two books. Dr. Zeger received his Ph.D. in statistics from Princeton University. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a member of several committees for The National Academies, including the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, the Committee on Estimating the Health-Risk-Reduction Benefits of Proposed Air Pollution Regulations, and the Committee on Gulf War and Health: Health Effects Associated with Exposure During the Persian Gulf War.

Lauren Zeise, Ph.D., S.M. is the Chief of the Reproductive and Cancer Hazard Assessment Branch in the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment at the California Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Zeise’s main research areas of interest include cancer and reproductive risk assessment. Her current work addresses cancer and reproductive risk methodologies and characterizations, establishment of baseline risks, and guidance for evaluating risks to the fetus, children, and adolescents from environmental exposures. She is widely published. Dr. Zeise received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is currently serving on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board. Dr. Zeise has served as a member of numerous committees for The National Academies which have addressed topics such as air quality, assessing exposure of herbicides in Vietnam, copper in drinking water, and risk characterization. She currently serves on the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and is also a member on the Committee on Toxicity Testing and Assessment of Environmental Agents.