FMD

Dr. Thurmond is professor emeritus in veterinary epidemiology, who is serving as Co-Director of the Center for Animal Disease Modeling and Surveillance, (CADMS), and Co-Director of the FMD Laboratory. His interests during the past 38 years of professional service have included clinical medicine and clinical epidemiology, primarily in diseases of livestock, new methodologies for diagnostic epidemiology, and modeling and development of systems and models for disease detection, surveillance, and control, particularly for foreign animal diseases.

Dr. Perez is a veterinarian and epidemiologist, originally from Argentina, who has worked on diagnosis, spatial analysis, modeling, and surveillance of food animal diseases for over 10 years. In 2008 he became an Associate Director of CADMS and Co-Director of the FMD Laboratory. During the last 5 years he has published >30 papers on epidemiological modeling and surveillance of infectious animal diseases.

Dr. Willeberg is a senior veterinary global health specialist at CADMS since 2007, when he retired as the chief veterinary officer for Denmark. Until 1999 he was professor in veterinary epidemiology at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen. Since 1972 has been active in many international bodies concerned with animal health and he has published more than 100 scientific papers mainly on epidemiological topics.

Dr. Ascher is the former State of California public health virus laboratory director, and in 2001, he was detailed to the Department of Health and Human Services to develop the biodefense laboratory network. He led the subgroup of the Infectious Disease Informatics Working group that developed the BioPortal prototype system for West Nile virus infection and botulism. He is currently retired and consults part-time with the Center and serves a Senior Medical Advisor to the California Emergency Management Agency. He also serves as the Associate Director for Emergency Response in the NIH-sponsored Pacific Southwest Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Dr. AlKhamis is a veterinarian, has a Master of preventive veterinary medicine from UC Davis and currently is a veterinary epidemiology PhD candidate, originally from Kuwait. He is currently involved in research in Avian influenza, as part of his PhD thesis, and contributes to development of the Disease Bioportal.

Dr. Brito is a veterinarian, originally from Chile, MPVM, and PhD student who has been working in laboratory diagnostic research and animal disease epidemiological modeling for the last 3 years. She has been involved in research studies on Avian Influenza, Bluetongue, Paratuberculosis, and FMD in the US and overseas. She joined the Disease BioPortal project in January 2010, contributing with the system development, FMD, and RVF news reports.

Ms. Ferreira is an analyst for CADMS. Her responsibilities include, data management and analysis, web-based searches for recent FMD News reports, and research support for BioPortal development. She also is responsible for grant proposal submissions, budgets, personnel issues, and project planning and organization.

Ms. Nez graduated is from the state of Arizona. She recently finished her BS in Animal Biology from the University of California, Davis. She works as an analyst at CADMS.

Mr. Whedbee is a programmer in charge of the technical development of the BioPortal. He is the webmaster for the FMD News and for the BioPortal. He also provides general computer technical support for the laboratory.

Yolando Ortiz is an undergraduate student at UC Davis. Her responsibilities include finding and sending FMD & RVF news items.

Robin Chang is an undergraduate student at UC Davis. He provides technical support for CADMS.