Varduhi Petrosyan
Varduhi Petrosyan is an Associate Professor of Health Sciences from the American University of Armenia (AUA) School of Public Health (SPH) in Yerevan, Armenia. She is the Associate Dean of the SPH and Director of the Center for Health Services Research and Development. Dr. Petrosyan earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management. She also has a Master of Science, focusing on environmental health, from the University of Idaho. Dr. Petrosyan teaches graduate courses in health services research, program evaluation, and comparative health systems. She has successfully led health services research projects in Armenia and the region focusing on public health services, tobacco control, tuberculosis, primary care, ophthalmic care, diabetes care, environmental health, and determinants of health disparities among women and other vulnerable populations, including working migrants, diabetes patients, tuberculosis patients, pregnant women, and children 0-7 years old. Prior to her arrival to AUA, she held a position of Research Assistant at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she conducted research on comparative health systems (focusing on health spending and cross national comparison of quality) in member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Dr. Petrosyan has authored multiple peer-reviewed publications and has extensively presented her work at international scientific meetings and conferences. She is currently the Associate Editor of the International Journal for Equity in Health, an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal presenting evidence relevant to the search for, and attainment of, equity in health across and within countries. Since December 2012, Dr. Petrosyan is the Advisor on Health Reforms of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia on a voluntary basis.
Landrigan Philip
Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., M.Sc., obtained his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1967, interning at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital and completing his residency in Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston. He obtained a Master of Science in occupational medicine and a Diploma of Industrial Health from the University of London and then went on to serve as a commissioned officer in the United States Public Health Service from 1970 to 1985 before becoming an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and then Medical Epidemiologist, for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. During his years at the CDC, Dr. Landrigan participated in epidemiologic studies of measles and rubella, directed research and developed activities for the Global Smallpox Eradication Program and established and directed the Environmental Hazards Branch of the Bureau of Epidemiology. Dr. Landrigan also served yearlong terms as a field epidemiologist in El Salvador and northern Nigeria while at the CDC. As Director of the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, from 1979 to 1985, Dr. Landrigan headed the US national program in occupational epidemiology. From 1988 to 1992, he served as Chair of a National Academy of Sciences Committee whose final report, “Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children”, provided the principal intellectual foundation for the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. Dr. Landrigan also served on the Presidential Advisory Committee for Gulf War Veteran’s Illnesses from 1995 to 1997 before becoming Senior Advisor on Children’s Health to the Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1997, where he was responsible for establishing a new Office of Children’s Health Protection. Dr. Landrigan is currently Director of the Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, Ethel H. Wise Professor, Chair of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine and Director of Environmental and Occupational Medicine for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He holds a Professorship in Pediatrics is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine and is Editor-in-Chief and former Environmental Research Editor of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.
Bruce Boghosian
President, American University of Armenia
Yerevan, Armenia
Dr. Bruce M. Boghosian is the third president of the American University of Armenia, having assumed the post on September 1, 2010. Dr. Boghosian spent the previous ten years in the Department of Mathematics at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, where served as professor and chair. He also held adjunct professorships in the Departments of Computer Science and Physics. Dr. Boghosian’s research has been devoted to developing a fundamental understanding of the nature of turbulence in fluid dynamics, and he uses both theoretical and computational methods to study this problem. Dr. Boghosian is the recipient of many awards and honors, including Tufts University’s Distinguished Scholar Award in 2010 and Tufts University’s Undergraduate Initiative in Teaching (UNITE) award in 2002. Dr. Boghosian was elected to Fellowship of the American Physical Society in 2000 and was elected as a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia in 2008. Dr. Boghosian has over 80 publications and has given 150 invited talks. He serves on the editorial boards of four scientific journals, including the Journal of Computational Science, Computers in Science and Engineering, the International Journal of Modern Physics C, and Physica A. With two others, he holds a patent for “System and Method for Delivery of Documents over a Computer Network.” Dr. Boghosian received his bachelor’s degree in Physics and master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; he carried out his thesis research at MIT’s Plasma Fusion Center. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Applied Science at the University of California, Davis.
Artur Grigoryan
Artur Grigoryan is a president of Ecological Right NGO, which aims to facilitate the constitutional right to living in an environment that is favorable the citizens’ health and well-being. He obtained Master degree in Law at Yerevan State University in 2011. Since 2012 he is a Legislative assistant at National Assembly (Parliament) of the Republic of Armenia preparing new draft laws; reviewing and commenting on draft legislation; prepares the documents to be submitted to the National Assembly for debate.
Until December 2012 Artur was a Legal Coordinator of Aarhus Centers of Armenia, OSCE Office in Yerevan, providing with legal support for coordinators of 15 Aarhus Centers of Armenia for provision of environmental information and participation in public hearings of economic projects, which may harm the environment.
He conducted a Gap Analysis of RA Legislation on Environmental Protection and is a member of Joint Government-NGO Task Force on Drafting RA Law on Environmental Impact Assessment.
Since September 2012 Artur is a Legal Fellow at Open Society Foundations’ fellowship program “Human Rights in Patient Care” promoting civil society engagement in public health policy.
Elisabet Paunovic
Dr Elizabet Paunovic is employed in WHO European Centre for Environment and Health as the Program Manger for Environmental Exposures and Risks. She is holding degrees from the Medical Faculty in Belgrade (Serbia) as the medical doctor, and postgraduate degree from Medical Faculty in Ljubljana (Slovenia), specialization of occupational health. Her working experience is covered by more than 28 years of experience in occupational and environmental health, as the main researcher in numerous projects related to occupational and environmental impacts on health. Dr Paunovic was serving as the chief coordinator of occupational and environmental health service in the biggest Serbian Electric Power Plant “Nikola Tesla”, as the Secretary Deputy for Environment in the City of Belgrade and in the Ministry of Health of Serbia on different posts, between others as the State Secretary for Health. Her main areas of professional expertise and activities are related to occupational and environmental health interventions and actions aimed to prevent and reduce occupational and environmental impacts on health. At the current position Dr Paunovic is managing multiple environmental and occupational exposures and risks and in particular the areas dealing with air quality and noise, chemical safety, environmental health inequalities, housing and urban health. The activities are performed through different partnerships by research and evidence development (including norms, standards, evidence based policy options, trends), advocacy and awareness rising and by providing technical support to the member states of WHO European Region.
Alen Amirkhanian
Alen Amirkhanian is the Director of the AUA Acopian Center for the Environemnt. He also lectures at AUA’s College of Science and Engineering courses on environmentally sustainable design and engineering as well as decision making tools for energy use and generation. Prior to AUA he has been a Senior Vice President of Research at Michael Porter’s Initiative for a Competitive Inner City. He has consulted with the World Bank, UNDP, and the Brookings Institution on energy efficiency, economic, and urban-growth issues. He holds a Masters’ degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
Kurt Straif
Dr. Straif is Head of the IARC Monographs of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, World Health Organization, Lyon, France. His research focuses on environmental risk factors for cancer. He serves on several national and international committees on primary and secondary prevention of cancer. He has a long record of teaching medicine and epidemiology and is the Scientific Director of the IARC International Summer School on Cancer Epidemiology since 2010. He studied medicine and philosophy (theory of science) at the Universities of Liège, Heidelberg and Bonn. He is Board-certified in Internal Medicine and Occupational, Environmental and Social Medicine. He received his MPH and PhD in Epidemiology from the School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles. He was a Research Fellow in Internal Medicine, University of Bonn, 1984-90; Visiting Scientist, Department of Environmental Sciences, School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, 1991; Assistant Professor, Institute of Occupational and Social Medicine, University of Giessen, 1991-95; Assistant and Associate Professor, Institute of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, University of Münster, 1995-2001.
Soffritti Morando
Morando Soffritti, M.D., is the Scientific Director of the Ramazzini Institute since 2001, where he previously served as Vice Director. His research focuses on the identification of the causes of tumors, particularly those of industrial and environmental origin. Dr. Soffritti’s research also includes the evaluation of substances that can be effectively used in chemoprevention, in particular for mammary cancer.
Dr. Soffritti holds degrees in medicine and surgery from the University of Bologna. In 1977 he specialized in gastroenterology and began his post-graduate training as a Visiting Fellow at the Royal Free Hospital of London. From 1979 to 1981 he worked as a Visiting Scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, USA, and in 1984, completed an additional specialization in oncology. Dr. Soffritti is the author of more than 170 publications and serves as an expert for working groups at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France and the National Toxicology Commission of the Italian National Institute of Health. In 2001 Dr. Soffritti was nominated Secretary General of the Collegium Ramazzini, an international academy of 180 experts in occupational and environmental health. He is a lecturer in Industrial and Environmental Carcinogenesis for the Specialization Schools of Oncology at the Universities of Turin and Bologna. In 2007 Dr. Soffritti was named Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (NY, USA), where he was also honored with the Irving J. Selikoff Award in April 2007 for his outstanding contributions to the identification of environmental and industrial carcinogens and his promotion of independent scientific research.
Dennis Nowak
Doctor Nowak is an Occupational Health Physician specializing in pulmonary disease. He is currently Chair of occupational and environmental medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University (and Technical University) in Munich, Germany. He is also a member of the Board of Chairs, Human Sciences Center of the Ludwig Maximilian University. His PhD Thesis is entitled “Clinical and experimental studies on the effect of irritating agents on the respiratory tract,” published in 1995. He is a fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini. He is an active member of the German Society for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, German Society for Respiratory Disease, the International Society for Environmental Medicine and other societies. He has awards from the German Respiratory Society and German Society for Occupational and Environmental Medicine and other societies. He is member of the editorial boards of Annals of Agricultural and Environmental Medicine, Atemwegs- und Lungenkrankheiten, Suchtmedizin, Umweltmedizin in Forschung und Praxis, Allergologie, Dermatologie und Beru und Umwelt (Occupational and Environmental Dermatology), Allergo-Journal, International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, and Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology, and others. He studied Medicine at the University of Hamburg taking his final exam in 1985. He has degrees in internal medicine, pulmonology, allergology and environmental and occupational medicine.
Ian von Lindern, Ph.D., P.E.
Ian von Lindern is co-founder and CEO of TerraGraphics Environmental Engineering, and co-founder of TerraGraphics International Foundation (TIFO), a non-governmental organization, both based in Moscow, Idaho. He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Science and Engineering from Yale University. Dr. von Lindern has 38 years of national and international environmental engineering/science experience. He has directed over 40 major health/environmental investigations involving primary and secondary smelters and battery processors, landfills, and uranium mill tailings at several major mining/smelting sites in the United States, as well as internationally in Asia, Africa, Australia, and Latin America. Dr. von Lindern has worked for the State of Idaho on various projects involving the Bunker Hill/Coeur d’Alene Basin Superfund Site for over thirty years as the lead Risk Assessor. In that capacity he has had extensive experience applying exposure and biokinetic lead modeling in human health risk assessment, cleanup criteria development, and remedial design. Ian has led five international cleanup projects in China, Russia, Dominican Republic, Senegal, and Zamfara, Nigeria where severe mortality and morbidity effects have occurred in recent years. Dr. von Lindern has served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board (SAB) on five occasions, reviewing the scientific basis for lead regulatory policy for the U.S.
Langard Sverre
Dr. Sverre Langård graduated as MD from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, 1966; master of toxicology at the University of Surrey, UK, 1977, and he received his PhD in 1980 – on the toxicology and its cancer potential of chromium – from the University of Oslo, Norway. He has published more than 150 scientific papers on relations between exposure at work and different types of cancers. Has served as director of two different clinical departments of occupational medicine in Norway, the latest at the University Hospital of Oslo. He has served as professor on occupational medicine at the University of Trondheim, Norway and visiting professor at Tulane University, New Orleans as well as at National Taiwan University, and has served on a number of committees for WHO, primarily for The International Agency of Cancer, Lyon, France. Has also served for two periods on the board – and has chaired for two periods one of the scientific committees – of the International Commission on Occupational Health and he has been a Collegium Ramazzini fellow from 1984 and onwards.
Mehlman Myron A.
Dr. Myron A. Mehlman has been Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City since 1980. He was educated at Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas, City College of New York (B.S. 1957), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D. 1964). He did Fellowships at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Enzyme Research (1967) and the Harvard Business School (Program for Health Systems Management 1974).
He was Associate Professor of Biochemistry with tenure at Rutgers University and tenured Professor of Biochemistry (1969-1974) at University of Nebraska College of Medicine. He was Professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Rutgers School of Pharmacy and New York University Medical School.
He was a founding member and past president of the American College of Toxicology and Chaired its First and Second National Meetings. He was a founding member of the Collegium Ramazzini and remains a member of the Executive Council and the Council of Fellows. Other professional memberships include the International Society of Exposure Analysis (past president), American Society of Biological Chemists, American Physiological Society, American Institute of Nutrition, American Society for Experimental Therapeutics and Pharmacology, American Chemical Society, Society of Toxicology, American College of Toxicology (past president), Air Pollution Control Association, New York Academy of Sciences, Sigma Xi, Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Society for Risk Analysis, and American College of Nutrition.
Dr. Mehlman is founding editor of the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health and the Journal of Environmental Pathology and Toxicology. He has been series editor for Advances in Modern Nutrition, Advances in Modern Toxicology, Advances in Modern Environmental Toxicology, Symposium on Metabolic regulation. He is a member of several Editorial Boards of Toxicological journals. He was elected to the Academy of Toxicological Sciences and was elected Fellow of the American College of Toxicology. He received the Ramazzini Award in 2002.
Since 1962, Dr. Mehlman has published over 160 articles in the field of toxicology, biochemistry, nutrition, and public health. He has edited or co-edited over 55 books.
Natali Pier Giorgio
Pier Giorgio Natali received his MD degree from “La Sapienza” University in Rome and completed his education with diplomas from ECFMG and the Board of American Medical Laboratory Immnunology and advanced training in immunopathology at The Scripps Clinic Research Fnd.S.Diego,USA. He joined in the early 70ties the “Regina Elena” National Cancer Institute, the oldest (1935) Comprehensive Cancer Center in Italy. Here through combined laboratory and clinical studies he shaped his profound interest in translational medicine which has been the hall mark of his scientific production in oncology, including the areas of prevention and public awareness. At the time of his chairmanship as Scientific Director (1995-2001) of the “Regina Elena” Institute, he strongly supported “intra moenia” and territorial prevention activities launching a massive program for the prevention of sun-light related risks in the regional elementary schools which has been later adopted and awarded internationally. The initiated the activities of the first Italian center for prevention of oral cavity tumors in a comprehensive cancer center. He has been President of the Italian Cancer Society. He is presently Chairman of the Early Tumor Diagnosis Program Team of the Italian League Against Cancer and highly active in the Mediterranean Task Force for Cancer Control (MTCC). Dr. Natali has published over 350 studies with high Citation Index. He belongs to the Advisory Board of the “CR Journal” edited by the American Association for Cancer Research addressing public awareness, advocacy and long cancer survivor issues.
Professor Massimo Crespi, M.D., (Emeritus) FCR,
National Cancer Institute,
Regina Elana,
Roma, Italy
Dr. Massimo Crespi holds a degree in Medicine from the University of Rome. His specializations include: Metabolic and Liver Diseases (1963); Gastroenterology (1967): and Clinical Oncology (1974). In 1967, Dr. Crespi organized the GE Service and the Cancer Prevention Center at the National Cancer Institute “Regina Elena” in Rome. He later became Director of these Services and Chief of the Department. He was President of the European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and later of the World Organization of Digestive Endoscopy (OMED). Dr. Crespi has published 225 scientific papers in Italian and international journals mostly devoted to prevention, screening and diagnosis of digestive cancers, with special interest in CRC. He recently became Emeritus Chairman of the Council of Emeritus Professors and Consultant for Education Affairs for the Cancer Institute.
Margrit von Braun, Ph.D., P.E.
Margrit von Braun is an environmental engineer with degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S), the University of Idaho (MCE), and Washington State University (PhD). She is a licensed Professional Engineer. Her teaching and research has been in the area of hazardous waste management and risk assessment. She helped found and directed the Environmental Science and Environmental Engineering programs at the University of Idaho from 1993-2003 and served as dean of the College of Graduate Studies for nearly 10 years before retiring in 2010. She and her husband, Dr. Ian von Lindern, founded TerraGraphics Environmental Engineering, Inc. in 1984; currently with 6 offices the company’s projects have focused on remediation of hazardous waste sites, particularly in mining districts. Margrit is co-founder of TerraGraphics International Foundation (TIFO), a non-governmental organization providing assistance to communities to reduce environmental exposures. Dr. von Braun received a 3-year leadership development fellowship from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Outstanding Faculty Award from the College of Engineering and the Graduate Teaching Excellence. She has served as President of the Western Area Graduate Schools. In 2012, Dr. von Braun was elected as a Fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini.
Susan Spalinger
Susan is an environmental scientist with nearly 17 years of experience specializing in metals contamination, risk and exposure assessment, soil and dust sampling, data analysis and data management, and quality assurance/quality control procedures. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Science from Washington State University and a M.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Idaho. Her experience spans from small site assessments to characterization and cleanup at the United States’ largest mining/smelting impacted sites. She has authored nearly 100 documents, including field sampling plans and risk assessment reports for contaminated sites. She has assisted Drs. von Braun and von Lindern on international projects including a lead smelter site in the Russian Far East and childhood lead poisoning in Senegal. Susan is a Principal and co-owner of TerraGraphics Environmental Engineering, Inc., an Idaho-based firm that maintains a strong commitment to improving the environment and communities in which we work.
Raina M. Maier, PhD
Dr. Maier serves as Director of the University of Arizona NIEHS Superfund Research Program (UA SRP) and also as Director of the University of Arizona Center for Environmentally Sustainable Mining (CESM). These institutions are focused on solving environmental and human health issues in areas of US Southwest that have been impacted by hazardous waste generated by the mining industry. Unique to the US Southwest is our semi-arid environment where two exposure routes are important; inhalation of dusts generated by dry climatic conditions and ingestion of contaminated groundwater that is difficult to remediate because of the depth to our drinking water aquifers. Part of the UA SRP mission is to engage our community and translate our research to benefit society. A large part of our community engagement effort has been devoted to the successful development of a series of modules for promotoras (hispanic health care workers). We train the promotoras using a “train the trainers” model to promote reduction in toxic exposures in low income Hispanic communities. In 2013 Dr. Maier was named a Leading Edge Researcher at the University of Arizona and was a Keynote speaker at the Penn State University Environmental Chemistry & Microbiology Symposium. She received her BS in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Minnesota and PhD from Rutgers University in Microbiology. She did a Post-Doc at the University of Iowa in Biochemistry.
Andrew McCartor
Blacksmith Institute
Andrew McCartor is a Regional Program Director for the international environmental health organization Blacksmith Institute. Mr. McCartor leads the organization’s efforts to identify and mitigate environmental health risks from industrial pollution in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Philippines. Mr. McCartor manages Blacksmith Institute’s global Toxic Sites Identification Program in the Former Soviet Republics—an initiative to identify and screen toxic hotspots in low- and middle-income countries where industrial pollutants jeopardize human health. Mr. McCartor also manages environmental health intervention projects to mitigate risks to human health. He currently oversees a project to remove 20 tons of trinitrotoluene from an abandoned Soviet chemical plant in Ukraine; the installation of water filters in schools and hospitals to remove heavy metals and radionuclides in a mining town in Kyrgyzstan; the removal of soil contaminated with lead from playgrounds in a town in Russia; and a project to measure and reduce the presence of heavy metals in fishponds in the Philippines, among other projects. Mr. McCartor received his Bachelor of Arts in economics from Bucknell University and his Juris Doctor focused on international environmental law and policy from Lewis and Clark Law School.
Englund Anders
Dr. Anders Englund retired in 2004 after serving as Director of Medical and Social Affairs for the Swedish Work Environment Authority for ten years. From the early 1970’s he has predominantly been involved in the health and safety issues concerning the construction industry while acting as Medical Director of the nation-wide occupational health service for the construction trades established by the Swedish social partners in the construction sector. He has added an epidemiological dimension to his work, focusing primarily on occupational cancer in construction workers. The end-user perspective on asbestos handling has been a special case. Dr. Englund has simultaneously served as Advisor to several countries regarding general and construction related health and safety issues. He served from 1979 to 1982 as Principal Secretary for Governmental Commission on Cancer Prevention and Control and from 1982 to 1984 was the Executive Director of UICC, Geneva, SW and in 1991 as a visiting scientist with CDC/NIOSH in Washington, DC.
He served as co-chair of the Technical Advisory Committee for the CPWR Center for Construction Research and Training. He is a Fellow and previous Executive Board Member of Collegium Ramazzini and received the Ramazzini Award in 2006 for preventive work in construction worker safety and health.”
Rice Carol H.
Dr. Carol Rice, CIH, is professor emerita at the University of Cincinnati, Department of Environmental Health. She is an occupational hygienist with more than 35 years experience in professional practice and 25 years in academic research and teaching and worker health and safety education. She specializes in the assessment of current industrial exposures and the evaluation of working lifetime exposures and has a special interest in the use of historical exposure data to reconstruct past human exposures for occupational epidemiology studies. Dr. Rice organized the multi-state, multi-institution Midwest Consortium (MWC) for Hazardous Waste Worker Training. The MWC participants include site workers, emergency responders and workers in a range of industrial settings; the Consortium also serves the needs of minorities and low-income residents potentially impacted by hazardous materials in their neighborhoods. As professor emerita, Dr. Rice continues to participate in funded projects on refractory ceramic fibers, beryllium and worker training and serve on several advisory boards.
George Piligian
George J. Piligian, MD, MPH is an Occupational Medicine Physician in Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine, at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Dr. Piligian has practiced occupational medicine for over 20 years treating patients with a wide variety of work-related medical disorders at the Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine in New York City. His primary interest in occupational musculoskeletal disorders of the upper extremities developed while treating injured sewing machine operators employed in the sweat shops of New York City’s garment district and at the Miller Institute for Performing Artists where Dr. Emil Pascarelli pioneered the treatment of injuries affecting musicians and identified the critical interaction between biomechanical forces and postural weakness. He has published on the medical management of occupational disorders of the distal upper extremities, occupational respiratory disorders, and the health of health care professionals. Dr. Piligian has also taught environmental health science as visiting faculty at the College of Health Sciences of the American University of Armenia.
Denny Dobbin
Denny Dobbin has over 45 years occupational hygiene experience as an officer in the US Public Health Service and as an independent policy analyst. He served with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, (and its predecessors) where he managed research programs and developed policy including assignments with the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He managed a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Superfund grant program for model hazardous waste worker and emergency responder training. He now works independently on occupational, environmental and public health policy issues for labor and other non-governmental organizations. He is the President of the Society for Occupational and Environmental Health, and is past Chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics. He chairs the TerraGraphics International Foundation and is a member of the Blacksmith Institute Technical Advisory Board. He is past Chair of the Occupational Health and Safety Section, American Public Health Association. He was the 1998 honoree for the APHA Alice Hamilton award for life-time achievement in occupational health. He is a Collegium Ramazzini fellow. He is a Certified Industrial Hygiene (ret.). He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Idaho, and a M.Sc. in Occupational Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
Karyl Norcross Mehlman
Karyl Norcross Mehlman, M.D., Ph.D. is Clinical Professor of Neurology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas, where she has been since completing her Residency in Neurology at Northwestern University Hospitals in Chicago, Illinois. She received a B.A. degree in 1973 and combined M.D. and PhD (in Pharmacology) degrees at Northwestern University in Chicago in 1978. Her Doctoral thesis dealt with the neuropharmacology and neurophysiology of Dopamine in an animal model of Parkinson’s Disease. She is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in Neurology.
In addition to teaching and patient care, Dr. Mehlman has done research and published in many areas of neurophysiology. She worked with Dr. Marvin Legator (dec.) and with her husband, Myron Mehlman, in toxicological and epidemiological studies in areas of diagnosis and treatment of lead levels in young children and the effects of MTBE in experimental animals and humans.
She will be presenting studies by Dr. Philip Landrigan on the effects of lead and other chemicals in pregnancy and early childhood.
Karen Aghababyan
Dr. Karen Aghababyan is a Chief Scientist and Head of Environmental Lab at AUA Acopian Center for the Environment. He holds a PhD Degree from the Institute of Zoology of National Academy of Sciences of Republic of Armenia. He teaches seven courses in Environmental Science, Sustainable Management of Natural Resources, Wildlife Biology, and Environmental Studies. He has received a Whitley Award for Nature Conservation. He is appointed a National Coordinator for European Breeding Bird Atlas 2 from Armenia. He has consulted UNDP, USAID, GIZ, WWF, and Ministry of Nature Protection of RA in conservation issues and in monitoring of wildlife.