Officers

Past Chair:

Mark H. Weir

is an Associate Professor jointly appointed to the Sustainability Institute, and Division of Environmental Health Sciences, College of Public Health, at Ohio State University. He earned a BS and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Wilkes University and Drexel University respectively. His research specialties in risk analysis are: dose-response, exposure modelling, and risk characterization. As such he is focused on learning why opportunistic pathogens survive in environmental niches, and how to use this fundamental knowledge to develop mechanistic models to reduce the risks these pose to the environment. His broader research area includes:

• Drinking water biofilm microbial ecology and its impacts on opportunistic pathogens
• Operations research and analysis for health associated infections
• Water, wastewater and wastewater reuse treatment systems and risk-based optimization

Risk monitoring for building water and indoor air systems

weir.95@osu.edu | LinkedIn Profile | OSU Webpage | Twitter | Lab Webpage Blog | Google Scholar

Chair:

Alexis Layman Mraz

is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health at The College of New Jersey. She holds a PhD in Environmental Health with a minor in Epidemiology from The Ohio State University, a M.S. in Environmental Science, and a B.S. in Biology from Drexel University. Her research focuses on environmental microbiology with an emphasis on risk assessment. Her research interests include:

• Health risks associated with recreating in combined-sewer-overflow influenced surface waters
• Opportunistic pathogens in premise plumbing systems
• Pathogen-host interactions in biofilms

mraza@tcnj.edu | LinkedIn Profile | ResearchGate Profile | The College of New Jersey Profile

Vice Chair:

Kara Dean

holds a doctoral degree in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy from Michigan State University, and she has been a member of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) since 2018. She was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship recipient in 2019 and her research interests include quantitative microbial risk assessment, water quality, pathogen persistence, and dose response modeling.

deankara@msu.edu | Website | Google Scholar | Twitter

Senior Secretary:

Hao Pang

Dr. Hao Pang is currently a Biologist – Risk Modeler with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). Prior to joining FDA-CFSAN’s Risk Analysis Branch of Division of Risk and Decision Analysis within Office of Analytics and Outreach, Dr. Pang earned a M.S. and a Ph.D. degree in Nutrition & Food Science from University of Maryland. Dr. Hao Pang’s research focuses on developing risk-based tools that synthesize a wide diversity of data and information from different domains to provide a multi-faceted understanding of food safety risks, influencing factors, and the potential impact of current and proposed mitigations and controls to reduce the risk. His expertise includes quantitative microbial risk assessment, data analytics and visualization, machine learning, and multi criteria decision analysis.

Junior Secretary:

Kerry Hamilton

Dr. Kerry Hamilton is an Associate Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment with a joint appointment in the Biodesign Institute Center for Environmental Health Engineering at Arizona State University. She received her doctoral degree in Environmental Engineering from Drexel University and Master’s of Health Science (MHS) degree in Environmental and Occupational Hygiene from Johns Hopkins University. 

She was a Fulbright Scholar to Australia and Public Health Fellow at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Her research focuses on assessing and reducing health risks from pathogens transmitted by environmental exposures.

Student Representative

Syed Anjerul Islam

Anjerul is a 4th year PhD student in the Environmental Science and Engineering program at Gillings School of Global Public Health in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned a BSc in mechanical engineering from BUET (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology) and an MSc in Sustainable Water Management from Tufts University. Additionally, he has four years of experience implementing water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions in urban informal settlements within low- and middle-income countries with icddr,b. His research interest includes:

• Exploring the behavior, survival, and transmission of pathogens across various environments (air, water, and soil)
• Assessing quantified human health risks related to environmental exposure
• Evaluating the effectiveness and sustainability of water quality and sanitation systems to improve public health