biosafety advisory
Ted Myatt, Sc.D., RBP. Dr. Myatt is the Director of Research Compliance at a research university with oversight over the university’s Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC). The IBC provides National Institutes of Health mandated safety and exposure guidance to the research communities engaged in research involving recombinant DNA and infectious agents. He received in BS in microbiology from the University of Illinois and a Master’s in Environmental Management from Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment. Ted obtained his Doctorate of Science (Sc.D.) in Environmental Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. His dissertation was on infectious disease transmission in the workplace.
J. Craig Reed, Ph.D., RBP. Over the past 12 years, J. Craig Reed has worked to improve containment laboratory infrastructure outside the U.S. and to modernize biological safety guidelines and regulations, particularly in Russia and the former Soviet Republics where he worked with more than 50 epidemiological surveillance labs and biological research facilities. Craig has been trained in Russia to work at maximum containment (BSL-4) in the Russian positive pressure pneumatic suit.
Craig currently serves as President of the Chesapeake Area Biological Safety Association, the largest and oldest US affiliate chapter of the American Biological Safety Association (ABSA). He is lead technical representative to the Secretariat of the International Federation of Biosafety Associations – the only global biosafety organization representing biosafety professionals around the world. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Biosafety Association of Central Asia and the Caucasus (BACAC) for which he serves as Special Advisor. He is a Registered Biosafety Professional (RBP) with ABSA and is an active member of the biological safety associations of Brazil (AnBIO), Africa (AfBSA), Europe (EBSA), and the Asia-Pacific region (APBA).
As founder and president of Inspirion Biosciences, Craig advises on biosecurity, laboratory biosafety training, laboratory management and operations, policy analysis, and market assessments. Craig has worked as a consultant to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of State, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2011, he served on the organizing committee for the National Academies of Sciences international workshop “Biosecurity Challenges of the Global Expansion of High Containment Biological Laboratories.” He served four years of active duty service as a Captain in the U.S. Army and was chief of the genetics and physiology branch at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), where he directed investigations into the molecular mechanisms of plague pathogenesis. Craig is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Georgia.
Molly Stitt-Fischer, Ph.D., CPH. Dr. Stitt-Fischer is a biosafety professional currently serving as Biosafety Officer at a large academic and research institution. She completed the National Biosafety and Biocontainment Training Program, a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in biosafety at the National Institutes of Health. She is also a member of the Charter Class of professionals Certified in Public Health. Dr. Stitt-Fischer received her Ph.D. from the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh in April 2008. She also has a Master of Science in Molecular Toxicology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (February 2002) and a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from Allegheny College (May 1999). While pursuing her Ph.D., her research focused on exploring the connections between zinc homeostasis and nitric oxide signaling in the pulmonary endothelium. Prior to that, she worked as a research technician at the University of Pittsburgh examining zinc homeostasis in pulmonary endothelial cells.
