Title: A New Recombinant Phage Protein For Detection of E. coli O157:H7
Pat Rule received a B.S and M.S degree in Microbiology from Western Illinois University. Pat continued in academia first as a Research Assistant at Chicago Osteopathic Hospital and later as a Junior Scientist at the University of Minnesota. She joined bioMerieux, Inc. in 1987 and has contributed to the R&D test kid development for the VITEK®, VIDAS®, and BACTOMETER®. Ms. Rule has over 20 years of experience in applied food microbiology and has studied the kinetics, growth, survival, and recovery of a variety of food borne and environmental microorganisms. Today she is Senior Staff Scientist of Industrial Affairs for bioMerieux, where she partners with customers advising and developing with them the optimal rapid method application. She is a member of serveral professional organizations including AOAC, IAFP, ISBT, and PDA. She is currently serving as Chair for the Applied Laboratory Methods Professional Development Group withing IAFP.
Richard S. Brown, MS
Executive Director
MVA Scientific Consultants
Title: Characterization of Small Particle Contamination Using Light and Electron Microscopy
Richard S. Brown, M.S., is a microscopist and an Executive Director at MVA Scientific Consultants in Atlanta, Georgia. Since 1989, Rich has applied light and electron microscopy to small particle problems in manufacturing, packaging, toxic tort, food and forensic fields to characterize and identify small particles and determine their source(s). Rich received his Master's degree in Forensic Chemistry and worked as a Criminalist doing crime scene investigation (CSI) and trace evidence examination at the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Department in Santa Ana California. Rich has testified in court as an expert witness and is a member of the California Association of Criminalists, the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and is a diplomat of the America Board of Criminalists.
John J. Herries, PH.D.
Sr. Director of Operations
Chemir Analytical Services
Title: Confronting Food & Beverage Quality Failures with Analytical Chemistry
Dr. John Herries received his Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming where he performed In-Situ Fourier transform infrared investigations fo the adsorption characteristics of organic and inorganic adsorbates at mineral oxide surfaces. During his graduate research he also worked on various plymer film and resin projects and applied novel spectroscopic and analytical methods to solve real world problems. While Vice President of Research at WellDog, Inc., Dr. Herries designed, built and field deployed spectrometer systems for the detection of methane in natural gas wells and was involved in numerous other development projects and deployments. Dr. Herries joined Chemir Analytical Services in 2003 to lead the Specialized Services group. In this position, he was responsible for the client consultation, project design and insuring the technical accuracy of analytical work. Dr. Herries currently serves as the Senior Director of Operations. Throughout his time at Chemir, Dr. Herries has been involved in a variety of projects for the food and beverage industry, including food contaminations, materials identification, and packaging failures.
Andrew Bond, PH.D.
Senior Scientist
Title: High-Throughput, Low Volume Real-Time PCR for Pathogen Detection in the OpenArrayTM Platform
Dr. Andrew Bond received his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of Massachusetts Medical School where he performed research on post-transcriptional gene regulation in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. During his graduate studies, he identified and characterized genes involved in the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) pathway and further showed how the NMD pathway and ribosomal biogenesis are linked. Dr. Bond joined Abbott Labs, at the Abbott Bioresearch Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, as a postdoctoral fellow. While at Abbott he assisted the set up of a genomics and bioinformatics core, and worked with various therapeutic groups in performing gene expression analysis using both microarrays and real-time PCR. After the completion of the two year postdoc, Dr. Bond moved to Xpogen, a computational biology company, as a senior scientist. With Xpogen, Dr. Bond directed the analysis of customer data and became director of research. After stints with Autogen and Invitrogen, Dr. Bond currently serves as senior scientist in the customer support group with BioTrove, not only working with customers, but also performing in-house research using the BioTrove OpenArrayTM system.
Vanayak Kapatral, Ph.D.
Vice-President of Business Development
Integrated Genomics, Inc. - Chicago, IL
Title: Genome-wide Metabolic Reconstruction of Multiple Staphylococcus aureus Identifies Novel Antimicrobial Targets
Dr. Kapatral received his doctorate in Bacteriology from the University of Idaho and worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, studying microbial pathogenesis. Dr. Vinayak Kapatral joined Integrated Genomics in 2000 and has held several positions, including bioinformatics scientist, senior scientist, and is currently Vice-President of Business Development. Dr. Kapatral brings over eight years of hands-on experience in bioinformatics, genome analysis, and a wealth of experience working in the genomics industry delivering microbial solutions to a variety of clients from various sectors from academia and governmental agencies to industrial partners. Integrated Genomics' industrial customers vary from the pharmaceutical, chemical, and biotechnology industries, to food manufacturing and food safety.
Bruce Clark Hemming, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Microbe Inotech Laboratories, Inc.
Dr. Hemming is an accomplished science and business professional with over 30 years of real-world experience in microbiology and its practical applications. In 1982 he received his doctorate in Plant Pathology from Montana State University, Bozeman. His Bachelor's degree in Microbiology and Master's degree in Biochemistry are both from Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. He is the founder and president of Microbe Inotech Laboratories, which is now in its 16th year of business.
As an educator he served as an adjunct professor at St. Louis University as well as University of Missouri St. Louis and as a visiting faculty member for the Institute for Genetics Education at the University of Wisconsin. He currently serves on three biotechnology committees for local Universities and Colleges.
During his ten years at Monsanto Corporation Dr. Hemming was responsible for multi-disciplinary teams involved in original research. He earned several patents on his research within the field of microbiology. He was charged with the development of creative exploratory research within crop protection technology with a focus on biological control and microbial genetics and served as Biocontrol Project Leader in the development of biofungicides in conjunction with CSIRO Division of Soils (Australia) and State Universities in the U.S.A. Project coordinator of a multi-disciplinary research team working toward the development of biofungicides. His responsibility included the development of collaborative agreements, preparation of regulatory documents, microbial physiology and tracking studies, coordination of the natural product/gene discovery effort, and field trials of various projects, which included the first introduction into the environment in the U.S.A. of genetically engineered bacteria containing foreign genes.
Dr. Hemming has received many honors and awards related to his work and research, which has included being selected as a Ralph M. Johnson distinguished guest lecturer and has presented his work in Austria, England, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Yugoslavia and US universities. He is the author of more than forty peer reviewed scientific journals and industrial publications.
