2006 Public Health Symposium
'Katrina, Catastrophes, and Communicable Disease Calamities: Are We Prepared?'

Speaker Profiles

Susan L. Cutter

Dr. Susan Cutter is a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina. She is also the director of the Hazards Research Lab, a research and training center that integrates geographical information science with hazards analysis and management. Dr. Cutter has been working in the risk and hazards fields for 30 years and is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar in this field. Her primary research interests are in the area of vulnerability science—what makes people and the places where they live vulnerable to extreme events and how this is measured, monitored, and assessed. Her most recent book, Hazards, Vulnerability, and Environmental Justice, is a thematic collection of her work and was just published by Earthscan (2006).

Dr. Cutter's extramural research on environmental risks and hazards is supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, USGS, NOAA, South Carolina Emergency Management Agency/FEMA, and the Department of Homeland Security. She is a co-principal investigator and member of the Executive Committee of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence focused on the social and behavioral sciences. Dr. Cutter has also led post-event field studies of evacuation behavior from Three Mile Island (1979), Hurricane Floyd (1999), and the Graniteville, SC train derailment and chlorine spill (2005). Most recently she has led a Hurricane Katrina post-event field team (2005) to examine the geographic extent of storm surge inundation along the Mississippi and Alabama coastline and its relationship to the social vulnerability of communities.

Sandro Galea

Dr. Galea is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He was formerly Associate Director of the Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies at the New York Academy of Medicine and Assistant Professor at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Galea is primarily interested in the social and economic production of health, particularly mental health and behavior in urban settings. He has an abiding interest in the social and health consequences of collectively experienced traumatic events. His work includes basic epidemiologic research, theoretic development, and the application of innovative methods to epidemiologic problems.

Dr. Galea's work has been primarily published in medical and public health journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Epidemiology, American Journal of Public Health, and The Lancet. He has edited three books including Cities and the Health of the Public and Methods for Disaster Mental Heath Research. His work has been featured by several media outlets including TIME Magazine, The New York Times, and NBC Dateline among others. He has received a number of grants for research from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others. Dr Galea is an elected member of the American College of Epidemiology and a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and the Royal Institute of Public Health. He is board certified in Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine and is a licensed physician in Michigan, New York State, and Ontario. He has worked as a clinician in several remote rural communities including Galkayo, Somalia, Geraldton, Canada, and Ialibu, Papua New Guinea.

Paul R. Kleindorfer

Dr. Kleindorfer is the Anheuser Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Research Professor at INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France). During his career at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Kleindorfer was also professor of Business and Public Policy and a long-time co-director of the Wharton Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes. Dr. Kleindorfer has published over 25 books and many research papers in the areas of risk management, managerial economics and regulation. He has held a number of editorial and professional positions over the years, including his current positions as president of the Society for Economic Design and associate editor of the Journal of Regulatory Economics. He has consulted with companies and governmental agencies worldwide on risk management and technology strategy.

Dr. Kleindorfer's early research was concerned with the application of optimal control theory to deterministic and stochastic planning problems in economics and management. His later work has been concerned primarily with risk management. His sectoral interests have included a deep interest in network industries, such as the energy sector, and more recently in the chemical and semiconductor industries. As part of his ongoing interest in risk management, Dr. Kleindorfer has developed and maintained a continuing research program in environmental, health and safety risks, with a primary focus on the chemical and process industries and on catastrophic risks associated with natural hazards, terrorism and major accidents.

Eric K. Noji

Eric K. Noji is a physician who has recently joined the Center for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Medicine (CDHAM) after a distinguished career in public health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His last CDC assignment was serving as Senior Policy Advisor for Emergency & Humanitarian Assistance to the Director in Washington, D.C. Since 2002, he has been responsible for working with Congress, the White House and other Executive Branch agencies on issues related to emergency health preparedness and national security. In this position, he has been detailed as a Senior Health Advisor for Chemical and Biological Medical Readiness to both the Pentagon's Chemical & Biological Defense Program and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. During the spring and summer of 2003, Dr. Noji served as Deputy Medical Director of the US Government's Humanitarian Assistance Mission for Operation Iraqi Freedom responsible for the rapid determination of the medical and health needs of the Iraqi civilian population and recognition and treatment of potential biological, chemical and radiological weapon injuries.

Before his assignments to Washington D.C., Dr. Noji was associate director for Bio-Emergency Preparedness and Response for the National Center for Infectious Diseases at CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and during the anthrax crises in 2001, Dr. Noji was assigned to the White House Office of Homeland Security in the Executive Office of the President as an expert in the treatment of biological, chemical, nuclear and blast terrorism as well as Special Assistant to the U.S. Surgeon General for Homeland Security and Disaster Medicine. The Department of Defense has awarded Noji with three campaign medals for "Operation Enduring Freedom" (Afghanistan), "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and the "Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal" for "…extraordinary contributions to the public health of civilians under circumstances involving grave danger of death and serious bodily injury from enemy action…"

During his 18 year career at the Centers for Disease Control, he has had extensive domestic and international experience in responding to natural and technological disasters, terrorism, violent civil conflict, epidemics and wars resulting in hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people and other humanitarian crises. From 1996-2000 CDC seconded Noji to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Department of Emergency & Humanitarian Action in Geneva, Switzerland where he served as Director of Global Health Intelligence for Emergencies responsible for assessing the medical needs of and monitoring the health of refugees and other forcibly displaced populations around the world (including early warning of pandemic influenza and other outbreaks of catastrophic life-threatening potential).

Dr. Noji was a member of the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an Attending Emergency Physician at the Johns Hopkins Hospital prior to joining the CDC in 1989. He was the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Award for Distinguished Government Service in 2006. The Eric K. Noji Excellence Medal is awarded annually by the Department of Defense's Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance to recognize exceptional teaching, research and leadership in emergency health management, disaster medicine, peace-keeping and civil-military field operations. Dr. Noji was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies of Sciences in October, 2005.

Dr. Noji is the author or co-author of over 200 scientific articles and publications on disaster medicine, disaster epidemiology, clinical toxicology and the medical response to terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, refugee crises and complex humanitarian emergencies including the most widely used educational textbook on these topics, The Public Health Consequences of Disasters (Oxford University Press) and associate editor of the recently published text Disaster Medicine (Elsevier).

Dean G. Sienko

Dr. Dean Sienko is the Medical Director of the Ingham County Health Department and Chief Medical Examiner for Ingham County. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin Medical School, completed a preventive medicine residency at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and has a M.S. Degree in Clinical Research Design and Statistical Analysis from the University of Michigan. He is board certified in preventive medicine and public health. During the mid-80's, Dr. Sienko worked for the Michigan Department of Public Health and has been in his current position with the Ingham County Health Department since 1988. Additionally, since September 2006, he has served as the Acting Chief Medical Executive for the Michigan Department of Community Health.

Dr. Sienko has also had a 24-year career in the U.S. Army. He has held multiple positions in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve. Dr.Sienko is a veteran of the Persian Gulf War where he was a medical officer in Saudi Arabia. In the spring and summer of 2001, he was the Commander of Task Force Medical Falcon and the senior U.S. medical officer in Kosovo. Dr. Sienko became a Brigadier General on 1 October 2002 when he assumed command of the 804th Medical Brigade. The 804th was called to active duty in February 2003 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. From May 2003 through February 2006, Dr. Sienko served in the Middle East as the 804th Medical Brigade Commander and the Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC) Surgeon. Dr. Sienko is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the U.S. Army War College. He was awarded a Masters Degree in Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College.