The Katrina Team
Steven M. Presley, Ph.D., BCE – is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology and The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University. He serves as the Research Coordinator for the Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., National Program for Countermeasures to Biological and Chemical Threats. He holds a Ph.D. in Medical/Veterinary Entomology from Oklahoma State University and is a board-certified entomologist. His operational and research background has included the surveillance, prevention and control of vector-borne infectious diseases. He teaches a graduate-level course on biological threats in the environment, and his current research focus is upon emerging and resurgent zoonoses (diseases that can be spread from animals to humans under natural conditions) and their potential as biological threat agents.
Thomas Rainwater, Ph.D. – is a research assistant professor with The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University. He is stationed at the Jeffersonian Institute in Jefferson, Texas, which is the planned staging area for TIEHH’s pending research in New Orleans area. Dr. Rainwater possesses experience and expertise in the field of terrestrial toxicology, particularly in the long-term effects of environmental contaminants to reptiles.
Galen P. Austin, Ph.D. – is a senior research associate/post-doctoral fellow at The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University. He holds a Ph.D. in animal science. Austin has extensive field experience utilizing global positioning systems (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS) for temporal and spatial data analysis-- particularly in studies of the behavior and movement of animals.
Steve Platt, Ph.D. – is an assistant professor at Oglala Lakota College and has extensive research experience in the wetlands associated with the New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain area. Platt's close association with researchers at TIEHH and his previous work as a zoologist in the southern Louisiana region were valuable during the research project. During the sampling trip to New Orleans, he identified sampling locations in wetland areas and collected reptiles for contaminant analysis.
Other Key Contributors
Ronald J. Kendall, Ph.D. – serves as the founding director of The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University, a joint venture between Texas Tech University and Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at Lubbock, Texas. He is professor and chairman of the Department of Environmental Toxicology at Texas Tech. He has served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Scientific Advisory Panel as a member and chaired the panel for three years, ending in December 2004. He has served on a National Academy of Science Committee evaluating Superfund megasites and co-authored a document entitled “Superfund and Mining Megasites – Lessons from the Coeur d’Alene River Basin,” which was published by the National Research Council of the National Academies in July, 2005. He is the past president of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and is currently an editor of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
Todd A. Anderson, Ph.D. – is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology and The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University. His teaching and research focuses on the movement of organic chemical contaminants in the environment in order to evaluate and better characterize potential exposure of organisms to contaminants and support tests on chemical effects. He has developed research programs in the areas of environmental chemistry and analytical toxicology, as well as taught courses on “Pesticides in the Environment”, “Chemical Fate” and “Analytical Toxicology."
George P. Cobb, Ph.D. – is formally trained as an environmental/analytical chemist. Cobb has a research and publication history in evaluating the occurrence and trophic transport of metal and organic toxicants in the environment. He has a broad base of research interests that include waste site evaluation, pesticide exposures, non-lethal monitoring of contaminant uptake by wildlife and instrument design. Notable hazard assessment activities he has worked on include full scale pesticide risk assessments, exposure assessment at NAS Whidbey Island, Washington; McIntosh, Alabama.; Six Mile Creek, South Carolina; Bingham Creek, Utah; and the Anaconda Smelter, Montana. Also, he has served on 12 FIFRA SAP ecological risk assessment panel reviews.
Stephen B. Cox, Ph.D. – received his bachelor's in mathematics and his doctorate in biology from Texas Tech. He has done post-doctoral work in ecological informatics at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California in Santa Barbara, Calif. His research focuses on documenting and understanding the diversity of microbial communities within a variety of habitats, including tropical forest soils and ephemeral wetlands. He is investigating the use of bacterial communities as indicators of soil health and recovery from heavy metal contamination. In addition to research in microbiology, Cox is conducting research on informatics issues relevant to biological sciences, and he participates in initiatives to establish knowledge networks for use by ecologists. These networks would facilitate research by creating effective mechanisms of identifying, accessing, and understanding distributed data resources related to a variety of important environmental research questions.
Eric J. Marsland, Ph.D. – is a post-doctoral research fellow at The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech. He earned his Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Kentucky in 2003. Marsland has experience with inorganic analyses through previous employment with a contract environmental laboratory.
John C. Zak, Ph.D. – is a professor and serves as the chairperson of the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech, where he specializes in microbial ecology. He earned his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Calgary. His research efforts focus on understanding mechanisms that contribute to patterns of microbial functional and taxonomic diversity in semi-arid and arid landscapes and on evaluating the roles of fungi in the functioning of arid landscapes.