Bios
Assessment Strategy for Mold in Cold Rooms in Academic Research Facilities| Stephanie Brandal |University of Maryland, Baltimore 
Stephanie attended undergraduate and graduate school at Central Michigan University. After graduation she joined Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and enjoyed a successful 18-year career on the bench before joining University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Department of EHS in 2022 as a Research Safety Specialist and Lab Auditor. Her background in research positions her well to identify novel practices and understudied circumstances in safety, and to communicate with academic researchers regarding safe practices, continuous improvement, and safety culture.
KEYNOTE| Lisa Hensley, PhD| National Bio-Agro Defense Facility, USDA 
Dr. Hensley serves as the Director for the Zoonotic and Emerging Disease Research Unit for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, KS. Prior to joining the USDA, Dr. Hensley served as the Associate Director for Science at NIH’s Integrated Research Facility in Frederick MD, and positions as the Director of Regulatory Science for the Medical Countermeasures Initiative in the Office of the Commissioner at FDA and as the Chief of Viral Therapeutics at USAMRIID. She has an extensive background in public health, obtaining her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master in Immunology and Infectious disease from The Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Hensley has spent the last 25 years developing and characterizing animal models for high-consequence and emerging pathogens including Ebola and Marburg, SARs, MERs, Variola, mpox (formerly monkeypox) and other viruses. She has used these models in to develop, evaluate and help advance candidate countermeasures: therapeutics, post-exposure prophylaxes, vaccines, and diagnostics, to improve our nations and global health. Beyond the confines of the maximum containment laboratory, Dr. Hensley has worked in West and Central Africa and elsewhere establishing research laboratories to respond to outbreaks and allow for the conduct of clinical trials in low-resource environments. She is considered one of the world’s leading subject matter experts on emerging diseases and high-consequence pathogens. She is one of the few scientists with experience in the development of medical countermeasures from discovery, to pre-clinical evaluation and through clinical trials. Dr. Hensley has authored over 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers and book chapters and is a holder of multiple patents.
Risk Mitigation for Sorting Flow Cytometers: Updates to Aerosol Containment Testing | Kristine Reifel| NIH 
Kris received her PhD from the University of Southern California in Marine Environmental Biology where she studied phytoplankton ecology and ocean optics. She started using flow cytometry during her postdoctoral research at the J.J. MacIsaac Flow Cytometry Facility at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and at Oregon State University. As a Principal Investigator at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, she set up a flow cytometry facility within a containment laboratory to support single cell analysis and sorting of microbes from complex, and potentially biohazardous, samples for genomic sequencing. Recently, she joined the Flow Cytometry Core at the NIAID/NIH Vaccine Research Center and is learning the intricacies of immunophenotyping so she can better support researchers who are developing new vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases. Kris is a longtime member of the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) Biosafety Committee and recently became Chair. She also recently graduated from the ISAC Emerging Leader program. She is working to educate both the flow cytometry and biosafety communities about the ISAC Biosafety Committee standards and about practices and procedures for safe flow cytometry-based analysis and sorting of hazardous samples.
GED_kraken: Identifying Genomic Unbiased Way | Alan Shteyman | MRIGlobal 
Alan Shteyman is a Bioinformatics Staff Scientist who has worked at MRIGlobal for over 5 years. He has a Bachelors in Biochemistry/Physics from Stony Brook Univ. and two master’s degrees in computational biology from Carnegie Mellon Univ.. He has a background in Algorithmic Design, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Genomics, Metagenomics and Statistics. He has worked on Projects like the Metagenomic Classification tool PanGIA, Cas-CADE (Cas-CRISPR Analytical Design and Evaluation) a tool to automatically design Guide RNAs for CRISPR, and the portable Mercury Laboratory.
Implementing a College Scholarship Program for the Chesapeake Area Biosafety Association | Paul Landon, CIH, CSP, RBP| National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center 
Paul Landon is an Associate Director of Environmental, Health and Safety at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research on Fort Detrick, Maryland. He received a B.A. from Whitman College, an M.Ed from the University of Washington, and an MHS in Industrial Hygiene from Johns Hopkins University. Paul has worked in industrial and biological safety for the last 20 years including safety and occupational health positions at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), and the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) on Fort Detrick, Maryland. He has been a member of ABSA and the Chesapeake Area Biosafety Association (ChABSA) since 2004 and served as President of ChABSA from 2010 – 2011. He is a Certified Industrial Hygienist, a Certified Safety Professional, and Registered Biosafety Professional.
PANEL DISCUSSION: Applied Biosafety Research: Who Really Does It and Where do We go from Here? | Kelly Kim, MS, Deloitte| Joe Kozlovac, MS, RBP, CBSP, SM(NRCM), USDA ARS| Danielle Lohman, PhD, US State Department
Kelly Kim, M.S., is a Consultant at Deloitte. She has been the project manager for multiple projects focusing on the development of empirical evidence for biosafety practices. Additionally, she has been involved with several efforts to promote international biosafety and biosecurity capabilities and AI safety. She has authored multiple biosafety publications and has contributed to the development of several Innovations in Biosafety workshops. Kelly obtained her master’s in microbiology at Colorado State University and worked in a laboratory focused on Flavivirus replication.
Joe is a biosafety professional with over 35 years of experience across the biotechnology industry, academia and federal sectors. Mr. Kozlovac is a Registered Biosafety Professional (RBP) and a Certified Biological Safety Professional (CBSP) through ABSA International as well as a certified Specialist Microbiologist in Biological Safety Microbiology through the National Registry of Microbiologists, American College of Microbiology, ASM. Joe has a Bachelor's degree in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, PA and a M.S. in Environmental Science and Policy from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Awards include 2018, Arnold G. Wedum Distinguished Achievement Award, 1st recipient of the ChABSA Biosafety Professional of the Year Award (2015), 2009 Everett Hanel Jr. Presidential Award. Joe is currently employed at the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) where he is responsible for developing agency-wide biosafety policyand assisting ARS locations in implementing these policies, and other biosafety guidelines and regulations. Joe has served as Chair and led the development of the scientific program for the USDA ARS International Biosafety and Biocontainment symposium series. Joe was Co-Chair of a National Science and Technology Council Health Security Threats Subcommittee working group, which developed the Evidence-Based Laboratory Biorisk Management Science & Technology Roadmap published by the Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2022.
Danielle Lohman is a scientist and diplomat with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. Dr. Lohman began her government service as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow working on biological nonproliferation policy issues, including those related to the Biological Weapons Convention. She holds a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a BS in chemistry from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
Seeing the Trees for the Forest: How to Identify Trap Door Genomics Records Ahead of your Bioinformatics Workflow | Joseph Russell, PhD| MRIGlobal 
Dr. Joseph A. Russell is experienced in genomics-based methods for clinical diagnostics, biosurveillance, biosecurity, and forensic applications. His work includes the use of emerging hand-held molecular hardware and development of integrated mobile platforms to push genomics and metagenomics into the field, at the point-of-need. His technical skills involve researching and developing new bioinformatics solutions for actionable information in the clinical, biosurveillance, forensics, and public health space. With a Ph.D. in geomicrobiology from the University of Delaware, Dr. Russell has logged over four months at sea on various oceanographic research vessels studying subseafloor microbial ecology in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He has led several field deployments of experimental arbovirus surveillance in the Southeastern United States, and Dr. Russell is a co-inventor and lead developer of MRIGlobal’s ultra-portable laboratory platform, Mercury Lab.
Revitalizing Biosecurity: Key Fundamentals for Enhanced Laboratory Safety | Elizabeth Massoth| CURIS 
Elizabeth (McQuade) Massoth is the CURIS System Biocontainment Specialist. Massoth came to CURIS from the Biosecurity Research Institute at Kansas State University, a BSL-3, ABSL-3, ABSL-3Ag, and ACL-3 facility. Prior to working in high containment, she was a Research Assistant/Supervisor at the K-State Rabies Laboratory with ten years of experience in high complexity cell culture-based assays in a GMP/GLP/GCLP laboratory. Massoth has co-authored publications in the Journal of Applied Biosafety and will be graduating with her Master’s degree in Agribusiness in 2024.