IOM Staff Biographies

Lyla M. Hernandez has been a Senior Program Officer with the Institute of Medicine for the past ten years. During that time she has been study director for projects related to Gulf War veterans’ health, public health, complementary and alternative medicine, and genomics. Ms. Hernandez is the recipient of the IOM Cecil Award for research. Prior to joining the IOM, she was Director of the Pharmacy Intelligence Center of the American Pharmaceutical Association where she was responsible for identifying and conducting analyses of health care issues, national programs, and policies that affect pharmacy. She also served as Executive Director of the American Medical Peer Review Organization, the national trade association for organizations evaluating the utilization and quality of medical care. Lyla received her Masters of Public Health degree in medical care administration and health education from the University of California at Berkeley.

Erin S. Hammers is a Research Associate with the Institute of Medicine’s Board on Health Sciences Policy. She completed her Masters of Public Health degree at Columbia University with a focus on socio-medical sciences and health promotion. Prior to completing her M.P.H., Erin served in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan where she worked in a rural medical clinic, developing and teaching weekly nutrition and hygiene classes, and studying health promotion methodology. She has also worked as legislative field coordinator for People for the American Way and the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Alex Repace is a Senior Project Assistant on Board of Health Sciences Policy. Currently, he is supporting the Roundtable on Translating Genomic-Based Research for Health. Prior to coming to Board on Health Sciences Policy, Mr. Repace worked for the Board on Army Science and Technology for the National Research Council. He has a B.S. in microbiology from University of Maryland at College Park and training and experience in public health. Mr. Repace also has experience in research grants administration in the areas of biological and physical sciences.

Andrew Pope, Ph.D., is director of the Board on Health Sciences Policy in the Institute of Medicine. With a Ph.D. in physiology and biochemistry, his primary interests are in science policy, biomedical ethics, and the environmental and occupational influences on human health. During his tenure at the National Academies and since 1989 at the Institute of Medicine, Dr. Pope has directed numerous studies on topics that range from injury control, disability prevention, and biologic markers, to the protection of human subjects of research, NIH priority-setting processes, organ procurement and transplantation policy, and the role of science and technology in countering terrorism. Dr. Pope is the recipient of the NAS President’s Special Achievement Award and the IOM’s Cecil Award.

Lisa F. Barcellos, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley in the School of Public Health and currently holds faculty appointments in the Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco and Kaiser Permanente Division of Research Oakland and is currenly serving as a Health Sciences Policy Board Fellow at the Institute of Medicine. She serves as a co-investigator for the United States Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Group and the Multiple Sclerosis International Genetics Consortium. She is also a member of the Kaiser Permanente Autoimmune Disease Research Group and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Task Force on Prospective Studies of Risk Factors in Multiple Sclerosis. Dr. Barcellos has significant expertise and training in areas of human genetics, genetic epidemiology, molecular genetics and statistical analysis of complex genetic diseases. She has actively participated in the design, implementation, analysis and interpretation of human genetic disease studies for the last ten years, including numerous investigations of candidate disease genes and genomic regions, as well as autoimmune phenotype characterization and the identification of genotype-phenotype correlations in studies of autoimmune disease.  Dr. Barcellos obtained her Ph.D. in Immunology from the School of Public Health, University of California Berkeley in 1996. She was awarded a National Multiple Sclerosis Society postdoctoral fellowship in 1997, and completed three years of postdoctoral training in Genetic Epidemiology in the Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco in 2001. While at University of California, San Francisco, she was also the recipient of a NIH/K12 clinical research and training award as part of the prestigious NIH-funded “Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health” program for two years (2002-2004).