Ben Beard
Charles Benjamin (Ben) Beard earned a B.S. in 1980 at Auburn University, a M.S. in 1983 at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, and a Ph.D. in 1987 at the University of Florida. He was a post-doctoral fellow and associate research scientist at the Yale University School of Medicine from 1987 to 1991. In 1991, he joined CDC’s Division of Parasitic Diseases, where he served as Chief of the Vector Genetics Section from 1999 to 2003. In 2003 he moved to CDC’s Division of Vector-borne Diseases in Fort Collins, CO to become Chief of the Bacterial Diseases Branch. In this capacity, he coordinates CDC’s programs on Lyme disease, tick-borne relapsing fever, Bartonella, plague, and tularemia. During his 25-year tenure at CDC, Ben has worked in the prevention of vector-borne diseases, both in the domestic global arenas. In addition to his work as Chief of the Bacterial Diseases Branch, in 2011 Dr. Beard was appointed as the Associate Director for Climate Change in CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, where he coordinates CDC’s efforts to mitigate the potential impact of climate variability and disruption on infectious diseases in humans. In his efforts to coordinate activities and enhance communication across the U.S. government in the prevention of Lyme disease, Dr. Beard co-founded and co-moderates two informal federal working groups on Lyme and other tick-borne diseases. The first is the HHS Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Working Group and the second is the federal Tick-Borne Diseases Integrated Pest Management Working Group. He has published over 100 scientific papers, books, and book chapters collectively, and has served on a variety of committees and panels both inside and outside of CDC, including working groups or advisory panels for the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the American Meteorological Society. He is currently an Associate Editor for Emerging Infectious Diseases and past president of the Society for Vector Ecology. |
Dina Fonseca
One of Dr. Dina Fonseca's primary research interests are invasive mosquitoes, which transmit viruses such as those that result in Zika and dengue fevers. Her research has showed that mosquito populations can differ quite a bit across short distances and over time, changing epidemiological landscapes and risk estimates. She has also shown that mosquitoes move primarily associated with people (in boats, trucks and cars) and that association selects for sub-populations more likely to bite us. Dr. Fonseca works closely with county and state mosquito control programs and the public to develop effective and efficient strategies for mosquito and invasive species control that are sustainable and minimize impacts to the environment. More recently, Dr. Fonseca has started developing predictive tools to forecast changes in salt marsh mosquito populations due to sea level rise and strategies used to mitigate its impact on coastal communities. Predictive model and enhanced surveillance will allow mosquito control programs in coastal counties to develop proactive strategies and mitigate nuisance, disease and environmental impacts. Dina has a B.S. in Biology and Geology from U. Coimbra, Portugal, Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from the U. Pennsylvania, USA (1996). She was a Smithsonian Fellow at the National Zoo Institute for Conservation and Biodiversity, a NRC Associate at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, a Geneticist at the Smithsonian Institution, where she is a Research Associate and was a 2015-16 Burch Fellow in Theoretical Medicine. She became an Assistant Curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences in 2004 and joined Rutgers in 2007 as an Associate Professor. Dr. Fonseca was tenured in 2010 and became a full professor in 2014. She teaches Medical and Veterinary Entomology, Case Studies in Vector-borne Diseases and DNA Tools in Entomology, Ecology and Epidemiology to grads and undergrads. |
Sonya Sachdeva
Sonya Sachdeva is a computational social scientist with the US Forest Service in the greater Chicago area. Staffed with scientists from a wide range of backgrounds, “People and Their Environments” is one of only a few Forest Service research work units that studies the human component of natural resource management within urban ecosystems. Scientists in the unit conduct research on wide array of topics including the impact of climate change on conservation decision-making, understanding perceptions of air and water pollution and addressing environmental justice issues in urban environments. Sonya also has an adjunct appointment with the Environmental Policy & Culture program at Northwestern University. She holds a Bachelors in Economics from the University of Michigan and a doctoral degree in Cognitive Science from Northwestern University. Her current projects involve large-scale automated text analysis of climate change coverage in the media, field assessments of the efficacy of environmental programs and behavioral experiments to study the impact of resource scarcity on conservation behavior. |
John Richard Stepp
John Richard Stepp is a professor at the University of Florida where he teaches in the Department of Anthropology and Tropical Conservation and Development program. He is also a visiting professor at Minzu University in Beijing, China and was in residence at the University of Hawai'i as the Wilder Professor of Botany. He has conducted biocultural conservation, medical anthropology and anthropology of climate change research over the last two decades throughout the tropics, especially in the Maya Forest and in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia. His research explores persistence, change and variation of traditional ecological knowledge and practice and its effects on human health and well-being. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Ecological Anthropology and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethnobiology. |
Rachael Winfree
Rachael Winfree is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural resources at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her research interests include (1) how pollinators and the pollination services they provide are affected by global change, (2) the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services, (3) plant-pollinator networks, and (4) pollinator conservation and restoration. Her work has been funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and USDA-AFRI, and has been published in leading scientific journals including PNAS, Science, Ecology Letters, Ecology, and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Rachael’s research has also been featured in the popular media such as Nature (commentary), Audubon magazine, National Wildlife magazine, Science News, The Scientist, and National Public Radio (NPR). Rachael received her Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 2001 and her B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1990. |