FIFRA Scientific Advisory Panel Members
Members are appointed by the Administrator of EPA from nominations provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Members serve staggered terms of appointment, generally of four to six years duration. Current FIFRA SAP panel members are listed below.
Members
- Dana Barr, Ph.D.
Research Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health
Rollins School of Public Health
Emory University, Atlanta, GAEducation
Ph.D., Analytical Chemistry, Georgia State University
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Dana Barr is a Professor of Exposure Science and Environmental Health at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health. She is an internationally recognized expert in chemical (including pesticides) biomonitoring methodology and human exposure assessment. In 2011, she joined the faculty of Emory University. Her research focuses on evaluating maternal-child health, paternal reproductive health, and farmworker safety in the U.S. and abroad, e.g., Thailand.
Prior to joining Emory, Dr. Barr was employed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 23 years. During her tenure at CDC, she devoted much of her time to the development of methods for assessing human exposure to a variety of environmental toxicants including current-use pesticides, phthalates, organochlorine chemicals (pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)), phytoestrogens, diethylene glycol, etc.
Dr. Barr has authored or coauthored over 300 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and many published abstracts. She is the past President of the International Society of Exposure Science (ISES; formerly ISEA) and served a 5-year term as Editor-in-Chief of ISES's official journal, Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology. She is also an Associate Editor of Environmental Health Perspectives and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Chromatography & Separation Techniques and Journal of Health Research, and Advances in Medicine.
She has served on many scientific advisory committees in the U.S. and abroad, e.g., EPA FIFRA Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP), the National Children's Study Working Group for chemical exposures, German Research Foundation's Committee for Standardizing Analytical Methods for Occupational and Environmental Chemistry, and International Life Sciences Institute/Health and Environmental Sciences Institute's steering and technical committees for the Integration of Biomonitoring Data into Risk Assessment.
- Marion F. Ehrich, Ph.D.
Co-director, Laboratory for Neurotoxicity Studies
Professor, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Department of Biomedical Sciences & Pathobiology
Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, Blacksburg, VAEducation
Ph.D., Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Connecticut
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Marion Ehrich is a Professor at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine (VMRCRM) in Blacksburg, VA and VT Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke, VA. In addition to teaching pharmacology and toxicology to medical, veterinary and graduate students, her professional responsibilities include service in the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital Pharmacy and in the Toxicology Diagnostic Laboratory.
She has been teaching at VMRCVM since 1980 when she also became a member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT) and a Diplomat of the American Board of Toxicology (ABOT). She was elected a fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences in 1999. Dr. Ehrich’s primary research activities are associated with the comparative neurotoxicities of anti-esterase pesticides, with both in vivo and in vitro models used for study.
- David Jett, Ph.D.
Program Director, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MDEducation
Ph.D., Neuropharmacology and Toxicology, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Biographical Sketch
Dr. David Jett directs the NIH Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) Program designed to develop new drugs and diagnostic tools for treating victims of chemical exposures during an emergency, among other duties. Dr. Jett’s scientific interest is in the impact of pesticides on nervous system function, including the molecular and cellular mechanisms of cognitive and neural development. Specifically, he has expertise and experience with organophosphorus pesticides and nerve agents, and the heavy metal lead.
Dr. Jett’s other interests at NINDS are programs designed to increase diversity in the neuroscience research workforce, and translational research programs. Dr. Jett conducted postdoctoral research and subsequently joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Environmental Health Sciences where he conducted research as a university professor for several years.
- James McManaman, Ph.D. (chair)
Professor, Departments of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Physiology and Biophysics
University of Colorado, Aurora, COEducation
Ph.D., Chemistry, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO
Biographical Sketch
Dr. James McManaman is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Director of Integrated Physiology at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus. His primary research interests are in mammary gland biology, lipid metabolism, and preterm birth and perinatal biology.
He is the Research Director of the NIH funded Women’s Reproductive Health Research Program at the University of Colorado and he directs the University’s Frontiers in Pregnancy Research Symposia, a nationally recognized symposia that focuses on biological, psychosocial and clinical research related to pregnancy and perinatal biology.
Prior to his tenure at the University of Colorado, Dr. McManaman was a member of the Neurology Faculty at Baylor College of Medicine where he worked on motoneuron survival factors.
- Joseph R. Shaw, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Adjunct Appointments, School of Public Health and Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics Indiana University, Bloomington, INEducation
Ph.D., Environmental Toxicology, University of Kentucky
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Joseph R. Shaw is an Associate Professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University and holds adjunct appointments in their School of Public Health and Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics. He also holds a partial appointment as a Senior Lecturer of Environmental Genomics in the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham, UK. Dr. Shaw earned his doctoral degree in environmental toxicology from the Graduate Center for Toxicology at the University of Kentucky in 2001.
He then moved to Dartmouth College where he received an NIEHS post-doctoral fellowship to apply emerging Omics technologies to characterize mechanisms of toxicant actions. He joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2007. Dr. Shaw was named an Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) by the NIEHS in 2010, and recognized as an exceptional talent in the environmental sciences by the Royal Society, UK in 2013 for his work investigating toxicant exposure, genome structure, and toxic effects on individuals and populations. His research group seeks to discover critical, specific, and causative molecular toxicological and disease pathways resulting from complex environmental exposures. His work embraces new high- throughput molecular techniques and couples these with evolutionary theory, statistical analysis, and bioinformatics to integrate toxic- response across levels of biological organization. Current research in his laboratory focuses on (i) associating variation in genome structure with disease and toxicant response within and between populations; (ii) identifying the mechanisms of actions of chemical stress, especially metals, and (iii) elucidating the genetic and epigenetic underpinnings of mutations and establishing their role in evolved tolerance.
- Sonya K. Sobrian, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Howard University College of Medicine Director, Developmental Neurobehavioral Pharmacology Laboratory Howard University, Washington, DCEducation
Ph.D., Physiological Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa Canada
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Sonya K. Sobrian is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the Howard University College of Medicine, Director of the Developmental Neurobehavioral Pharmacology Laboratory, and Immediate Past Chair of the University's IACUC. Dr. Sobrian received her doctorate in Physiological Psychology from Carleton University, Ottawa Canada, and served a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University in Developmental Neurobiology; she also added pharmacology and immunology to her graduate (MA, Neuropharmacology: Ottawa University) and post graduate (Fulbright Fellow: Immunology Research Center, Belgrade, Yugoslavia) training.
The major focus of Dr. Sobrian's research involves the behavioral, immunological, and neurotoxicological consequences of prenatal and neonatal drug administration and drug and environmental stress-induced alterations in behavioral and immunological development. She has a longstanding interest in sex differences, and her lab was the first to show that prenatal environmental and psychological stress deferentially altered immune parameters in rat male and female offspring, research that she continued as a Fulbright Scholar at the Immunological Research Institute in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Her current research involves the life-span consequences of prenatal exposure to cocaine and nicotine, alone and in combination, with an emphasis on drug addiction in the aging organism. In developing animal models for neuropsychiatric diseases, Dr. Sobrian is currently exploring the role of prenatal environmental noise stress (PENS) in the etiology of autism and depression. For her work in establishing an environmentally-mediated neurodevelopmental animal model of depression, Dr. Sobrian was designated a L. Vernon Maddox NARSAD investigator.