Presentations by NIOSH Director John Howard, MD, and EPA Deputy Associate Administrator for Science Maureen Gwinn, Ph.D., DABT. Moderated by Christopher (Chris) Zarba, former Director of EPA’s Science Advisory Board Staff Office.
Featured speakers:
- John Howard, MD, Director, NIOSH
- Maureen Gwinn, Ph.D., DABT, Deputy Associate Administrator for Science, Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, EPA
Session Focus:
- Progress on children’s environmental health research and remaining knowledge gaps
- Future directions for federal research
- Indoor air quality, asthma, and occupational-school intersections
- Moving from science to action—how the federal government can help
- Interagency coordination opportunities
John Howard, MD, MPH, JD, LLM, MBA, serves as the Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Howard oversees NIOSH’s research activities focused on the study of worker safety and health and moving that research into practice to help empower employers and workers to create safe and healthy workplaces.
He is also the Administrator of the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program, where he leads a federal health care program that provides high-quality, compassionate medical monitoring and treatment for WTC-related conditions to those directly affected by the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Dr. Maureen Gwinn serves as the Deputy Associate Administrator for Science (DAA-S) in OASES. Dr. Gwinn previously served as the Acting Assistant Administrator for Research and Development (ORD) and Science Advisor at the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). In this role, she provided direction to ORD on overall program goals, objectives, policies, strategies, technical and scientific approaches, and program plans, based on a recognized scientific expertise. She also chaired the Agency Science Technology and Policy Council and oversaw the Agency’s scientific integrity program.
Dr. Gwinn held multiple leadership roles within ORD including Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator, Chief Scientist, National Program Director for ORD’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC) National Research Program, Director of the Biomolecular and Computational Toxicology Division within ORD’s Center for Computational Toxicology Exposure, Senior Science Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science and Associate National Program Director for Community Public Health in SHC.
Dr. Gwinn joined the US EPA in ORD’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, where she worked on human health hazard assessments for the Integrated Risk Information System program.
Dr. Gwinn earned her BS degree in Biology at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and her MS and PhD in Oral Biology at the State University of New York in Buffalo, New York. She became a diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology in 2007 and was nominated to the Academy of Toxicological Sciences in 2014.
Christopher (Chris) Zarba is an environmental scientist who spent 38 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where he held numerous senior leadership roles across the agency’s science and policy programs. He most recently served as Director of EPA’s Science Advisory Board Staff Office, overseeing the independent peer review of EPA science and recruiting nationally recognized experts to evaluate the scientific basis for agency policies and regulations. Over his career he also served as Director and Deputy Director of the National Center for Environmental Research, Chief of Staff for EPA’s Office of Research and Development, and Director of the Health and Ecological Criteria Division in the Office of Water.