Staff 

Michael McGeary
Study Director 

Susan McCutchen
Research Associate

Donna F. Barbisch, MG Ret., CRNA, MPH, DHA

Dr. Barbisch is among the nation’s most distinguished experts in terrorism, disaster preparedness, and national and international security interoperability. She is president of Global Deterrence Alternatives, LLC, and director of the Institute for Global and Regional Readiness. With more than 20 years of experience in managing complex private and public, and medical and organizational challenges, she addresses the complexities of combating terrorism through comprehensive planning and cultural change. She provides visionary policy and program integrating solutions related to the national security threats of terrorism, natural disasters, and emerging infectious diseases. Dr. Barbisch focuses on strategic planning for reducing threats and responding to crises with multi-level and multi-jurisdictional elements. She develops and implements holistic management programs that promote interoperability across civlian and military organizations as well as political and business environments that result in strategic partnerships. MG Barbisch served in a multitude of active and reserve military assignments from Vietnam to the Pentagon. Her final military assignment was as director of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Program Integration for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She has a bachelors degree from California University of Pennsylvania, an MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and DHA in health administration from the Medical University of South Carolina.

Frederick M. Burkle, Jr., MD, MPH, DTM 

Dr. Burkle is actively involved in research, policy issues, and writings in globalization and health; globalization and disaster management; global/international health as they pertain to war, conflict, recovery and rehabilitation, refugee care, and vulnerable populations; pandemics/epidemics, primarily population-based care and triage management, civil-military cooperation, and collaboration; tropical Medicine and bioterrorism; and United Nations reform and UN/WHO/UNICEF response and international health regulations in global health crises. A retired Professor from the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine, he is currently a Woodrow Wilson International Scholar and Senior Fellow, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Harvard University, and Associate Scientist, Johns Hopkins University Medical Institutions.He is a retired Naval Reserve Captain and former Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau of Global Health, US Agency for International Development. He received his MD degree from the University of Vermont College of Medicine, and his MPH from the University of California, Berkeley, a Diploma in Health Emergencies in Large Populations from the University of Geneva, and a Diploma in Tropical Medicine from the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. He is qualified in Emergency Medicine, Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Pediatrics,and Psychiatry. Dr. Burkle is an IOM member.

Colleen Conway-Welch, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACNM

Coleen Conway-Welch has served as pofessor and dan of Vanderbilt University School of Nursing since 1984. She has been active in nursing practice and nursing education for over four decades. The holder of three (3) honorary doctorates from Cumberland University, Georgetown University, and the University of Colorado, she is a graduate of Georgetown University, Catholic University of America, and New York University. She has published extensively, served on President Reagan’s Commission on the HIV Epidemic in 1988, the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare in 1998, the Governor’s Tennessee Commission on the Future of TennCare, and was appointed by Secretary Tommy Thompson to the Secretary’s Council on Public Health Preparedness, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness, DHHS. She is also a member of the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee (MCAC) with the Department of Health & Human Services and a member of the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute. She was named by President Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2006 as a Member of the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. In 2007, she was appointed by Secretary Leavitt of DHHS to the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. She is a former president, and one of the founders, of Friends of the National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Nursing Research.  She is an invited member of the /governor’s Office of Children’s Care Coordination (GOCCC) and member of the Board of Commissioners of the Tennessee Safety Seismic Commission panel of advisors.  She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, a charter Fellow of the American College of Nurse-Midwives, a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science and serves as a Director on the Boards of Pinnacle Bank, RehabCare Group, and Ardent Health Services in addition to numerous other 501(c)3 boards such as the Health Care Leadership Council in Washington, D.C. She is also the founding Director of the Nursing Emergency Preparedness Education Coalition.

Daniel Flynn, MD

Dr. Flynn is a board-certified radiation oncology physician on staff at Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, Massachusetts. He is an active lecturer on the visiting faculty at the Radiation Assistance Center and Training Site (REAC/TS) at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He serves as the medical consultant to the state of Massachusetts on their nuclear incident advisory team. As a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves Medical Corps, he has been an invited contributor to the armed services training manuals relating to medical management of mass casualties from a nuclear event, and an invited lecturer at the Armed Forces Radiobiological Research Institute. He also has been both triage officer and deputy commander of a combat support hospital and is a 2007 Iraq veteran. Dr Flynn received his MS degree in medical radiation physics from the Harvard School of Public Health, MD degree from Jefferson Medical College, and did postgraduate training at Massachusetts General Hospital where he later served on the staff with an academic appointment to Harvard Medical School.

Richard J. Hatchett, MD

Dr. Hatchett joined the Office of the Director in July 2005 as Associate Director for Radiation Countermeasures Research and Emergency Preparedness in the Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Prior to joining the division, he served as senior medical adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness. He received his medical degree from Vanderbilt University and completed postgraduate training in internal medicine at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center and medical oncology at Duke University Medical Center.

Fred A. Mettler, Jr., MD

Dr. Mettler is chief of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at the New Mexico VA Health Care System and a professor at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His area of expertise is medical effects of ionizing radiation. He is the United States representative to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), an emeritus commissioner of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP). Dr. Mettler has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was the Health Effects Team Leader for the International Chernobyl Project is an academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

Judith A. Monroe, MD

Dr. Monroe is chair of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and vice chair of the ASTHO National Preparedness Policy Committee. In December 2006, she traveled to Israel with a delegation from ASTHO for preparedness training with the first international delegation in the history of ASTHO and the start of an ongoing exchange with that country. She was appointed in March 2005 by Governor Daniels as the Indiana state health commissioner and medical director of Medicaid, and is a member of the National Governors Association Health Care Practice Task Force and Center for Best Practices Healthy Communities Work Group. She is a family physician at St. Vincent Hospital, whose medical staff she joined in 1992, serving as director of the Family Medicine Residency Program and the Primary Care Center until 2005. Dr. Monroe was clinical director with the Department of Family Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine from 1990 to 1992. From 1986-1990 she also served in the National Health Service Corps, providing health care in rural Appalachia, during which she was featured with former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in a documentary on the heath care crisis in America. She is chair of the Executive Board of Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation, and a member of the Boards of Indiana Health and Information Exchange, Area Health Education Cooperative, and Reach Out and Read. Dr. Monroe received her undergraduate degree from Eastern Kentucky University and is a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She did her post-graduate training at the University of Cincinnati, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Practice.

Paul E. Pepe, MD, MPH

Dr. Paul Pepe oversees one of the nation’s largest academic emergency departments (55 faculty, 70 residents and fellows) at the extremely busy county (public) emergency-trauma center (Parkland Hospital) and the North Texas Poison Control Center. He is also the Director of Medical Emergency Services for Public Safety, Public Health and Homeland Security in the Office of the City Manager for the City of Dallas and the jurisdictional Medical Director for the regional BioTel (EMS) System (a centralized EMS program that includes over 3,000 firefighters, EMTS and paramedics from the fire departments for the City of Dallas and 16 surrounding cities). He also provides medical direction for the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS) for counter-terrorism. In addition to a distinguished, productive career in academic medicine (with nearly 500 published scientific papers and abstracts including multiple landmark publications in multiple disciplines), Dr. Pepe has simultaneously served as a high-level municipal or state employee for a quarter century, managing large public budgets, but doing so in an in-the-trenches, “street-wise” manner. He is renowned for a grass-roots approach to planning, implementing and overseeing a systems approach to saving lives, both operationally and through clinical trials. His programs have resulted in some of the highest reported cardiac arrest and trauma survival rates among all large U.S. metropolitan cities. He was a senior author on the original American Heart Association Chain of Survival publication (1991), a reference now cited symbolically in nearly every CPR-related publication and training course worldwide, and he has served for many years as emergency medicine and trauma consultant for the U.S. Secret Service, White House Medical Unit, the National Institutes of Health, and network news organizations.

Thomas M. Seed, PhD

Dr. Seed is currently a consultant in the general area of radiation medical countermeasures, having retired at the end of 2007 as the Associate Director of Research, Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) in Hiroshima, Japan. Prior to the RERF appointment, he held the following professional appointments: Research Professor/Senior Scientist, Radiation Biophysics/Vitreous State Laboratory, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC (2003-2005); Group Leader/Senior Scientist, Radiation Medical Countermeasures, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, Bethesda, MD (1996-2003); Research Scientist/Group Leader, Radiation Hematology, Division of Biological and Medical Research, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne IL (1975-1995); and Assistant Scientist/Department Chairman, Biological Ultrastructure, Blood Research Laboratory, National Red Cross, Bethesda, MD (1973-1975). He currently serves as a Council Member of the National Council on Radiological Protection and Measurements, as well as a member of the Stem Cell Radiobiology Working Party of the International Commission of Radiological Protection, and previously on NATO-related research study groups concerning radiation injury and medical countermeasures. In addition to his research interest in the nature and mechanisms of action of radioprotective agents, he has also has interest in structural and function studies of radiation-induced hematopathology, cellular mechanisms of preclinical phase leukemogenic processes, and mechanistic studies on red cell destruction during infectious hemolytic anemias. Dr. Seed earned his BA from the University of Connecticut and MS and PhD (microbiology) from Ohio State University.

James M. Tien, PhD, EE, SM, BEE

Dr. Tien became dean of the University of Miami College of Engineering in September 2007. An internationally renowned researcher, he formerly served as the Yamada Corporation Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was founding chair of its Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems, and professor in its Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering. Tien joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1977 and twice served as its acting dean of engineering. In 2001 he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest honors accorded an engineer. His research interests include systems modeling, public policy, decision analysis, and information systems. He has served on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Board of Directors (2000-04) and was its vice president in charge of the Publication Services and Products Board and the Educational Activities Board. Tien earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer and his PhD in systems engineering and operations research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Robert J. Ursano, MD

Dr. Ursano is professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. He is also director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress. He has served as the Department of Defense representative to the National Advisory Mental Health Council of the NIMH and is a past member of the NIMH Rapid Trauma and Disaster Grant Review Section. Dr. Ursano is the editor of the journal Psychiatry and senior editor of the Textbook of Disaster Psychiatry. He has received the Department of Defense Humanitarian Service Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Dr. Ursano is widely published in the field of PTSD and the psychological effects of terrorism, bioterrorism, and traumatic events and disasters, and combat. He has been a member of many national advisory boards related to mental health including the IOM Committee on Psychological Responses to Terrorism and Committee on PTSD and Compensation. He was a physician in the US Air Force, retiring after 20 years service with the rank of colonel. Dr. Ursano received his MD from Yale University.