UMRSC Home >2009 Bernstein Symposium >Speaker Profiles

Speaker Profiles

Presented by
University of Michigan Risk Science Center (UMRSC) and
Mickey Leland National Urban Air Toxics Research Center (NUATRC)

Bios of Presenters
Bernstein Symposium
May 6 & 7, 2009

Honorable Dr. Stephen Johnson
Dr. Johnson served a distinguished 28 year federal career which culminated as the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2006-2009. He was responsible for 17,500 staff and an annual budget of 7.5 billion dollars. He was the first scientist and career federal employee to ever be appointed as Administrator. During his tenure he promulgated the most health protective air standards for ozone, soot and lead in U.S. history. Among his many achievements he established the first National Homeland Security Research Center, the first renewable fuel standard, the first water efficiency consumer label and certification program (water sense), and established the U.S. as the first nation in the world to review all pesticides in food, setting stringent standards for children’s health. Under Dr. Johnson’s leadership the agency pursued an aggressive enforcement program resulting in a record $51 billion in commitments from polluters. During his tenure the EPA received national recognition as one of the top 10 places to work in government.

Dr. Johnson holds a B.A. in Biology from Taylor University, M.S. in Pathology from The George Washington University and honorary Doctor of Science from Virginia Wesleyan University and Taylor University. He has received numerous national and international awards including the Presidential Rank Award for distinguished executives, the highest award that can be given to a civilian federal employee.

Laura J. DeGuire
Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
Laura DeGuire received a B.A. with honors in Education from Michigan State University and enhanced her science background with graduate level coursework in Natural Resources. Ms. DeGuire has 29 years of experience working in air quality, the last 27 with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Air Quality Division. Her career began in monitoring where she operated air monitor equipment, managed the Michigan Great Lakes Atmospheric Deposition network, performed data analysis, and participated in special studies. Ms. DeGuire is currently responsible for Air Quality Division public outreach, environmental education, and general materials development. She is the Department liaison for partnership initiatives such as MIair, “Action!” Day programs, AIRNow, and EnviroFlash.

Larry Gephart, M.P.H., DABT
Mr. Gephart is a Distinguished Scientific Associate with ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences. He has a Masters in Environmental and Industrial Health from the University of Michigan, and is a Diplomat of the American Board of Toxicology. Prior to joining EMBSI in 1990, Mr. Gephart was a corporate toxicologist at Eastman Kodak and a Study Director for inhalation toxicology with Food and Drug Research Laboratories. Currently, he manages the EMBSI Air Quality Program, and the toxicology programs for ExxonMobil Polymers Business Groups. Some recent air quality related activities include developing and stewarding the American Petroleum Industry multi-year research program for PM and ozone, and preparing comments on the USEPA National Ambient Air Quality Standard science reviews for ozone, oxides of sulfur, and PM. During an assignment with ExxonMobil Petroleum and Chemicals Europe, he was the lead industry representative on a World Health Organization committee charged with reviewing the health effects of PM and ozone.

John D. Graham
John Graham earned his B.A. (politics and economics) at Wake Forest University (1978). He earned his M.A. degree in public policy at Duke University (1980) before serving as staff associate to Chairman Howard Raiffa’s Committee on Risk and Decision Making of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences. He earned a Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University. Dr. Graham joined the Harvard School of Public Health in 1983. From 1990 to 2001 Dr. Graham founded and led the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA). In 1995 Dr. Graham was elected President of the Society for Risk Analysis and helped organize the first World Congress on Risk Analysis (Brussels, 2000).

In March 2001 President Bush nominated Dr. Graham to serve as Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget. From March 2006 to July 2008 Dr. Graham was Dean of the Frederick Pardee RAND Graduate School at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. On July 28, 2008 Dr. Graham assumed the Deanship of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs (Bloomington and Indianapolis). The School has about 1,500 undergraduate majors, over 300 master’s students and about 80 doctoral students. The 75 full-time faculty include laboratory scientists, social scientists, lawyers and policy specialists.

Dan Greenbaum
Dan Greenbaum joined the Health Effects Institute (HEI) as its President and Chief Executive Officer in 1994. In that role, Greenbaum leads HEI’s efforts, supported jointly by the EPA and industry, with additional funding from the Department of Energy, Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Agency for International Development, the Asian Development Bank, the European Commission, and foundations, to provide public and private decision makers with high quality, impartial, relevant and credible science about the health effects of air pollution. Greenbaum has focused HEI’s efforts on providing timely and critical research and reanalysis on particulate matter, air toxics, diesel exhaust and alternative technologies and fuels. Greenbaum has served on and led numerous expert panels of the US National Academy of Sciences and the US Environmental Protection Agency and he regularly presents the results of HEI’s scientific work to U.S. and international audiences, the U.S. Congress, the Asian Development Bank, and the European Parliament. Greenbaum has over three decades of governmental and non-governmental experience in environmental health. Just prior to coming to HEI, he served as Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection from 1988 to 1994.

Rogene F. Henderson, Ph.D.
Dr. Rogene F. Henderson is a Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute. Dr. Henderson earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Texas in 1960 and her B.S./B.A. in chemistry/biology from Texas Christian University in 1955. She was a Fulbright Scholar in physical chemistry in 1955-1956 and held fellowships at the Universities of Texas and Arkansas. Dr. Henderson has conducted research on the pulmonary effects of inhaled particles; the toxicokinetics of inhaled vapors and gases; the analysis of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid to evaluate inflammatory responses in the lung; and recently she conducted studies on the health effects of low level sarin exposures in rats. Dr. Henderson recently served as chair of the EPA Clean Air Science Advisory Committee and has served as Vice Chair of the Board of Scientific Councilors for the EPA Office of Research and Development. She is a former member of the NIEHS Advisory Council (1991-95), the Health Effects Institute Research Committee (1997-2005), and the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology (1998-2004)

Fernando Holguin
Dr. Holguin is the Director of the Pediatric Environmental Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh where he is also Assistant Professor in Medicine in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care. Dr. Holguin’s environmental research focuses on understanding the cardiovascular and respiratory health effects associated with traffic-related emissions. He has worked extensively in partnership with US and Mexican institutions in the El Paso – Ciudad Juarez border area.

Ilona Jaspers, Ph.D.
Using a variety of models, spanning primary human lung cells, animal models, and clinical human exposure studies, my lab is interested in how exposure to pollutants such as particulate matter, air toxics, and cigarette smoke modify inflammatory and immune responses in the lung. The main active research areas in my lab are 1.) determining the effects of cigarette smoke or diesel exhaust on the susceptibility to respiratory viral infections and 2.) how atmospheric aging changes the toxicity of ambient air pollutants. Specifically, we are examining cellular mechanisms through which exposures to cigarette smoke or diesel exhaust increase the susceptibility to and severity of influenza virus infections in humans. In addition, I am part of an investigative team at the School of Public Health, which is interested in how sunlight and atmospheric aging changes the toxicity of ambient air pollutants, including diesel exhaust emissions.

Rich Kassel
Rich Kassel directs the Clean Fuels and Vehicles Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. In the late 1990s, Rich worked with the New York MTA to reduce diesel particulate matter emissions from the MTA buses by 97% since 1995. Since then, Rich has worked closely with EPA, industry, and environmental leaders to create a series of federal regulations that will reduce emissions from every new diesel truck, bus; nonroad; locomotive and marine engine by more than 90 percent in years to come, eliminating more than 21,000 premature deaths and $160 billion in health costs annually by 2030. Rich co-founded the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles in 2002, which led the successful campaign to eliminate leaded gasoline in sub-Saharan Africa, and is working to reduce vehicle pollution in developing countries around the world. Since 2004, Rich has worked to reduce diesel pollution in Mexico’s largest cities. Rich is a member of the U.S. EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee and its Mobile Sources Technical Review Subcommittee, and is a member of the Health Effects Institute’s Advanced Collaborative Emissions Study (ACES) steering committee.

Gerald Keeler, Ph.D
Dr. Gerald Keeler is a Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Michigan. Dr. Keeler received a B.S. in Physics from Boston College and his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Michigan. His research focuses on meteorological processes pertinent to air quality including atmospheric deposition, exposure assessment for epidemiological and toxicological studies, and on the health effects of air pollution. Prof. Keeler has published more than 100 papers in peer-review journals while teaching a variety of graduate and undergraduate environmental, atmospheric, and climate change courses for the last twenty years. Dr. Keeler has been a leading expert on air pollution and mercury issues working with State, Federal, and International Agencies. Recently, he contributed to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)–global partnership on atmospheric mercury transport and fate research report.

Walter S. McManus
Dr. Walter S. McManus, an expert on alternative drive powertrains and automotive forecasting, is the head of UMTRI's Automotive Analysis Division. Dr. McManus is an economics research and analysis executive with a record of influential research and a history of leadership accomplishments. He is regularly invited to speak to industry, policy, and research organizations. He is widely cited as an authority on the automotive industry in the business and general media.

Prior to joining UMTRI, Dr. McManus worked at General Motors where he developed models to forecast vehicle sales, created visual information tools to stimulate new product development, and spent a year as a manufacturing supervisor in a component factory. He also conducted research on new automotive technologies and their impact on society and the environment, the market potential of hybrids and diesel-powered vehicles, and automotive product and brand portfolio strategies. He has also worked as executive director of forecasting and analytics at J.D. Power and Associates, where he developed a variety of forecasting auto sales models in most markets worldwide.

Dr. McManus earned a B.A. in economics from Louisiana State University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was also a Sidney Stern Fellow and a Foundation for Research in Economics and Education Fellow. His fields of specialization were econometrics, industrial organization, and labor economics.

Dr. Maria Morandi
Dr. Morandi is a Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, Texas. She is also a Certified Industrial Hygienist and Certified by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene. Dr. Morandi’s research interests include characterization of airborne particulate matter components; effects from airborne particulate matter and its components on clinical and cellular indicators of pulmonary and cardiovascular disease; exposure to nanoparticles; cellular-level effects of nanoparticles; association of personal exposure to airborne contaminants and early indicators of DNA damage; associations between indicators of chemical reactivity in the atmosphere (e.g., radical formation) and health effects. She served as PI of the Houston component of the RIOPA study and is Co-PI of HEATS. Dr. Morandi has served on numerous advisory panels, including the US-EPA Science Advisory Board’s (SAB) Integrated Human Exposure and Health Effects Committees, the U.S. EPA Clean Air Science Advisory Committee’s Ozone Review Panel, the CDC/ATSDR and NIEHS National Toxicology Program’s Boards of Scientific Councilors. She also serves as reviewer for the extramural research grant applications of the NIH and the intramural and extramural research and training programs of the CDC/NIOSH.

Jenny Quintana
Dr. P.J.E. (Jenny) Quintana, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health at the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University. She received her B.S. in Genetics from the University of California at Davis, her M.P.H. in Occupational and Environmental Health from San Diego State University and her Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research focus is on a) assessing human exposures to environmental agents though measurements in biological tissues and through personal exposure monitoring and b) studying genetic and environmental influences on the body’s ability to protect against damage from toxic exposure. Recent studies include measuring levels of toxic pollutants in house dust in homes with young children on both sides of the border, markers of DNA damage in placentas from a Tijuana hospital, and exposure to toxic air pollution inside vehicles crossing the US-Mexico border.

Thomas F. Robins
Thomas G. Robins, (A.B., Harvard, 1972; M.D., Tufts 1979; M.P.H., Univ. of Michigan 1983) has served on the faculty the Department of Environmental Health Sciences since 1984. He is an occupational and environmental physician and epidemiologist. He is the Director of two major training grants: 1) an Education and Research Center funded by the National Institutes of Health to train U.S. occupational health professionals at University of Michigan; 2) a National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center grant to develop human resource capacity in environmental and occupational health in the 14-nation Southern Africa Development Community. His research addresses global issues in environmental and occupational health with particular emphasis on respiratory morbidity associated with workplace exposures (coal dust, aerosolized protein, metalworking fluids) and ambient air pollution. Areas of focus include: 1) improvements in the available epidemiologic tools, methods of exposure assessment and measurement of disease outcomes to enhance the reliability of research findings; 2) the application of these research methods to the areas of most critical public health concern; and, 3) effective dissemination of knowledge regarding the causes and methods of prevention of occupational illnesses and injuries to employers and employees who may then modify health-related work practices and working conditions.

Kathryn Sargeant
Kathryn works for EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, where she is the Director of the Health Effects, Benefits, and Toxics Center. She has worked on transportation and air quality issues for EPA since 1991. She has a B.A. in Economics and a Master’s of Public Policy, both from the University of Michigan.

Alan Vette
Alan received a M.S. (1995) and Ph.D. (1998) in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. He has been with the U.S. EPA for 10 years performing research on source-related human exposures to air pollutants. He has led and been involved in designing and conducting research studies to determine the impact of air pollution sources on exposures at the personal, residential and community scales. Most recently, his attention has been focused on assessing exposures to air toxics in the Detroit Exposure and Aerosol Research Study (DEARS) and is currently a co-lead in EPA’s Office of Research and Development designing and implementing a research program to assess the impact of mobile sources on near-road air quality, human exposures and health effects.

Amanda Wheeler
Dr. Amanda Wheeler is a Research Scientist with the Exposure Assessment Section in the Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch at Health Canada. Dr. Wheeler investigated children’s personal exposure to airborne particulate matter while she obtained her Ph.D. in Environmental Health from Middlesex University in London, UK. Her current work with Health Canada, focuses on personal exposures to air pollution from residential and ambient sources, as well as understanding the intra-urban variability of air pollutants. This research builds on studies Dr. Wheeler undertook while a Research Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health where her research focussed on susceptible populations’ personal exposure to air pollution and cardiovascular health effects.

Ron Williams
Ron is the PM and Air Toxics Human Exposure Measurements Team Leader with the US EPA’s National Exposure Research Laboratory. He has held senior research positions in private, academic and governmental research organizations during the last 30 years with his primary focus being upon human exposures to complex environmental mixtures. These efforts have resulted in more than 100 peer review journal articles and hundreds of presentations at national and international conferences. His current research focuses on developing and leading multi-pollutant human exposure measurement panel studies involving particulate matter, pollutant gases and select air toxics. This research involves determining the relationships between personal exposures to these air pollutants and various source categories. It involves investigating the human and environmental factors that influence these sources to exposure relationships. Integration of the science across multiple EPA and non-EPA research institutions is often required to achieve this objective.