Emerging Issues and Research on Harmful Cyanobacterial Algal Blooms Impact on Populations, Ecosystems and Water
A Seminar Course
Course Instructors:
Dr. Gay Miller
Department of Pathobiology, Division of Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine
Dr. Jeff Levengood
Illinois Natural History Survey and Dept. of Comparative Biosciences
This course made possible because of funding from the University of Illinois Graduate College's Focal Point Grants.
Val Beasley
Professor Emeritus of Veterinary, Wildlife, and Ecological Toxicology
• After graduation from Purdue, School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Beasley was a small animal veterinarian for six years in total, including in Asbury Park, New Jersey and at his own animal hospital in Dayton, Ohio.
• He completed a residency and PhD in toxicology at the University of Illinois, and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Toxicology.
• He helped establish the Animal Poison Control Center at the University of Illinois, which remains allied to the University and is now part of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
• He rose to Professor and Chairman of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Assistant Head of the Department of Comparative Biosciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois.
• He founded the Envirovet Program in Wildlife and Ecosystem Health, serving as its directory from 1991 to 2011. Through highly intensive 4- to 7-week summer courses on Lake Superior, and then in Florida and Georgia and either Brazil, Kenya, South Africa, or Tanzania, Envirovet trained about 500 individuals from 47 nations around the world in aquatic and terrestrial wildlife health, ecosystem health, and ecological toxicology.
• Dr. Beasley’s research has focused largely on mycotoxins, blue-green algal (cyanobacterial) toxins, plant toxins, herbicides, insecticides, heavy metals including in marine mammals, mass die-offs in East African flamingos, and causes of amphibian declines.
Dr. Beasley was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Kenya in 1997, a 2009 “One Health Wonder” cited in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the 2011 recipient of the Kenneth DuBois Award for Outstanding Career Achievement from the Midwest Society of Toxicology, the Visiting Professor in Global Animal Health for 2011at Cornell University, and a member of the National Academies of Science Committee to Assess Current and Future Workforce Needs in Veterinary Medicine the report of which was published in 2013.
Speakers
Wilson Rumbeiha
DVM, PhD, DABT, DABVT; Professor of Toxicology, IA State University
Wilson Rumbeiha is a 1982 graduate of Makerere University, Kampala Uganda (DVM) and of the Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario Canada in 1991 (PhD).
After a completing a Residency/Post doc at Kansas State University in 1993, Dr Rumbeiha joined Industry, where he served as Staff Scientist at Embro Corporation in Minneapolis, MN, and then Study Director, Comparative Toxicology Division, White Sands Research Center, Alamogordo, NM.
Following the short stint in industry Dr Rumbeiha worked as a Clinical Toxicologist at Michigan State University from January 1996 to August 2011where he rose from the rank of Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, in the Department of Pathobiology and Diagnostic Investigation. He also served as the Section Chief of Toxicology in the Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health. In August of 2011 Dr Rumbeiha joined Iowa State University where he is currently serving as a Professor of Veterinary Toxicology in the Department of Veterinary Diagnostic and Production Animal Medicine (VDPAM). He is Board-certified both by the American Board of Toxicology (ABT) and by the American Board of Veterinary Toxicology (ABVT). He has held and continues to serve in various professional leadership positions. He is President and founder of Toxicologists Without Borders, Inc. (http://www.toxicWB.org). He has over 55 peer-reviewed publications and 28 book chapters. Currently Dr. Rumbeiha is the Veterinary Toxicology Editor for the Medical Toxicology Journal, and is serving the editorial board of Journal of the Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation. His current research interests include understanding neurotoxicology of sulfides, the toxicology of harmful algal blooms, and applied veterinary toxicology research. He is currently the coordinator of the Cyanobacteria Harmful algal blooms research consortium (http://www.CyHABs.org). He is also serving on the Pesticide Panel, Iowa Department of Agriculture.
PhD, MPH;
National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control
Lorraine C. Baker
Dr. Lorraine Backer is Senior Scientist/Environmental Epidemiologist at the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her PhD in genetic toxicology from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas and her MPH from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She has been with the CDC since 1994. She headed CDC’s Harmful Algal Bloom activities, including HAB-related disease surveillance since the program began in 1998. She is also the lead for NCEH’s program to assess the public health implications of using private wells for household water in the US. Her research includes assessing public health impacts from contaminants in drinking and recreational waters.
David Gay
Director, National Atmospheric Deposition
Program, Illinois State Water Survey, UIUC
• B.S., Environmental Sciences, McNeese State University, 1985.
• M.S., Environmental Sciences (concentration in air quality and biogenic hydrocarbons), Washington State University, 1987.
• Ph. D., Environmental Sciences (concentration in climatology of air pollution), University of Virginia, 1996.
• Currently: Coordinator, National Atmospheric Deposition Program, and a Research Scientist, Illinois State Water Survey, a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, since 2008.
• Research interests/projects include
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Monitoring of wet deposition of mercury
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Dry deposition of mercury
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Statistical trends determination
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Monitoring of ammonia/ammonium across the Midwest
• He has worked in consulting engineering (CH2M Hill, Inc.), on the faculty at UNC Charlotte, and as a self employed business owner.
Stephanie A. Smith
PhD, Beagle Bioproducts, Inc.
Dr. Smith has over 15 years of hands-on experience in microbiology, biochemistry, bioprocessing, and metabolic engineering. She has built her career, and now Beagle Bioproducts, upon her research interests and training at the Ohio State University in the areas of carbon fixation and photosynthetic microbiology. After postdoctoral training at Battelle in Columbus, OH, Dr. Smith built an extramurally-funded research program at Wright State University in Dayton, OH, focused upon carbon fixation and bioremediation of contaminated groundwater. Preferring the industry environment Dr. Smith returned to Battelle, where she built and led multidisciplinary and cross-institutional teams working heaviliy in bioenergy and photobiological recovery of phosphorus from wastewater. Algaeventure Systems, Inc. (AVS), in Marysville, OH had been one of Dr. Smith’s Battelle clients, and this startup venture recruited her to a Chief Scientist position in 2011.
AVS went the way of most startups (i.e., it ran out of money), but Dr. Smith had caught the entrepreneurial bug and co-founded Beagle Bioproducts with business partner and financier Eric Roy in 2012. Beagle’s original mission was the development of cyanobacterial toxin reference standards. Beagle has developed an operation to collect the blue-green algae in HABs and convert the biomass into products (including the toxin reference standards), and our featured service is toxin testing for cyanobacterial toxins. These capabilities have grown into Beagle’s “HAB Marketplace,” which encompasses a broader range of products and services that help people to monitor and manage harmful algal blooms (HABs). Dr. Smith testified before Congress regarding the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act (HABHRCA) in 2011, and she has actively raised HAB awareness through blogging and social media, most recently regarding the renewal of HABHRCA in 2014. She encourages people interested in HABs to educate themselves about this important legislation, and become part of the process of ensuring appropriations are made for R&D related to HABs.
Gregg Good
Surface Water Section Manager
Bureau of Water
Illinois EPA,
P.O. Box 19276
Springfield, Illinois 62794-9276
Phone: 217/782-7028 Fax: 217/785-1225
E-mail: Gregg.Good@illinois.gov
Gregg Good, an almost 30-year employee of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, is a proud born and raised “cheesehead” from Wisconsin. Gregg received his Natural Resources Degree specializing in Soil Science from the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point in 1982. He came to Illinois in 1983 working first for several central Illinois Soil and Water Conservation Districts. He subsequently moved to Illinois EPA in 1985, working first in the Bureau of Water’s Nonpoint Source Management Unit. He later became Manager of the Bureau of Water’s Lakes Unit in 1989. In April 2000, he took on his current role as Manager of the Bureau of Water’s Surface Water Section, overseeing development and implementation of inland lake, river/stream, Lake Michigan, and wetland-related Clean Water Act Section 305(b) monitoring and assessment activities. One of those monitoring activities includes looking around the state of Illinois for Harmful Algal Blooms and Microcystin!
As a side note, Gregg spent his boyhood weekends at his parents cottage on the shores of Castle Rock Lake, a damned up portion of the Wisconsin River. The damned up reservoir upstream of Castle Rock Lake is Lake Petenwell. Both lakes are known to occasionally turn pea soup green in the summer months and are now studied extensively. At the time of his youth, nobody new or cared about the potential recreational exposure to HABs and Microcystin. And while not scientifically proven, childhood recreational use of Castle Rock Lake, in combination with raising three biological sons with wife Patti, and hosting approximately 20 international foreign exchange students from around the world, may be the cause of his prematurely grey hair.
A. Alonso Aguirre
D.V.M., M.S., Ph.D.; Associate Professor
Department of Environmental Science and Policy
George Mason University
Prince William Campus
10900 University Blvd., MSN 4D4 Occoquan 420 Manassas, VA 20110
Research Focus: Wildlife disease ecology, conservation medicine, ecohealth, one health
Dr. Alonso Aguirre heads a program of collaborative research that focuses on the ecology of wildlife disease and the links to human health and conservation of biodiversity. His research has been instrumental in revealing the impact of emerging diseases of marine wildlife populations. Dr. Aguirre’s international experience brings applied solutions to ecological health issues accomplished through transdisciplinary teams, innovative research, scientific excellence, and long-term monitoring of sentinel species. He teaches courses in environmental toxicology, wildlife disease ecology and conservation. During the summer, he organizes and teaches an off-campus graduate course in zoo, wildlife and conservation medicine targeting the NOVA University Network established by Nordic countries. Dr. Aguirre served as the Executive Director of the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation and Director of the Mason Center for Conservation Studies. Previously he was Senior Vice President at EcoHealth Alliance in New York, Clinical Assistant Professor at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and Research Professor at Columbia University’s Center for Environmental Research and Conservation. He also acted as Wildlife Epidemiologist for NMFS Protected Species Investigations heading the epidemiology program for Hawaiian monk seals and Hawaiian green turtles.
He authored the books Conservation Medicine: Ecological Health in Practice; Helminths of Wildlife: A Global Perspective; and New Directions in Conservation Medicine: Applied Cases of Ecological Health, and published over 160 professional papers, monographs and scientific reports. He serves as co-editor of EcoHealth, Journal of Wildlife Diseases and European Journal of Wildlife Research. He has advised government agency and NGO leaders of several countries in the Americas, Southeast Asia and Western Europe.
Course Instructors
Prasanta Kalita
Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering Department, University of Illinois
Dr. Prasanta K. Kalita is a Professor and Leader of Soil & Water Resources Engineering program of the Agricultural & Biological Engineering Department at the University of Illinois. He also holds appointments as Assistant Dean of Research in the College of ACES and the Director of the ADM Institute for Prevention of Postharvest Loss at the University of Illinois. Dr. Kalita is a Fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and an Honorary Professor at the State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resources and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. Dr. Kalita has a well-funded research and education program both nationally and internationally, has guided more than 35 Ph.D. and MS graduate students, advised more than 50 undergraduate research students, and published extensively in peer reviewed journals. He has served as Associate Editor of the Transactions of the ASABE and Applied Engineering in Agriculture as well as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Spatial Hydrology. Dr. Kalita has won several departmental, college, campus, regional, and two national awards on teaching, and has been recognized with Distinguished Teacher Scholar Award at the University of Illinois.
Jodi Flaws
Professor, Comparative Biosciences at the University of Illinois
Jodi A. Flaws is a Professor in Comparative Biosciences at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign. She received a B.S. (1986) in Biology from St. Xavier University, a M.S. (1990) in Biology from Loyola University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Physiology (1994) from the University of Arizona. During her M.S. research, she examined gonadotrope regulation with Dr. Diane Suter as her M.S. advisor. During her Ph.D. research, she examined the effects of an industrial chemical, 4-vinylcyclohexene diepoxide, on the mammalian ovary with Dr. Patricia Hoyer as her Ph.D. advisor. Following completion of the Ph.D. degree, Dr. Flaws performed post-doctoral research on genes and environmental chemicals that regulate female reproductive function in the laboratories of Jonathan Tilly (Johns Hopkins University) and Dr. Anne Hirshfield (University of Maryland). Following post-doctoral training, she accepted an Assistant Professor position at the University of Maryland (1997) and subsequently was promoted to Associate Professor (2001). In 2006, Dr. Flaws accepted a position as Professor of Comparative Biosciences at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign.
Dr. Flaws’ research program is mainly focused on determining the mechanisms by which environmental chemicals such as pesticides and plasticizers affect the development and function of the ovary. Her research is funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and Environmental Protection Agency. She has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers that have involved extensive participation and authorship by 16 graduate students, 6 post-doctoral fellows,
and 10 undergraduate students. She is the recipient of the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, University of Maryland Student Mentoring Award (2003), the Patricia Sokolove Outstanding Mentor Award (2006), the Dr. Gordon and Mrs. Helen Kruger Research Excellence Award (2008), the Pfizer Animal Health Award for Research Excellence (2009), and the University Scholar Award (2009-2012).
Wanda Haschek-Hock
BVSc, PhD
Professor Emerita
Department of Pathobiology
College of Veterinary Medicine
Wanda, a veterinary pathologist and Professor Emerita of Comparative Pathology at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, has over 30 years of experience in comparative, respiratory and toxicologic pathology. Wanda received her BVSc (DVM equivalent) from the University of Sydney and her Ph.D. from Cornell University. She then held an appointment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory before taking a position at the University of Illinois. She is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists (ACVP) and the American Board of Toxicology (ABT), and a Fellow of the International Academy of Toxicologic Pathologists (FIATP).
Her primary research has been in the health effects and pathophysiology of natural toxins including cyanotoxins and mycotoxins. Wanda has over 100 scientific peer reviewed publications in the fields of pathology and toxicology, and is senior editor of the Handbook of Toxicologic Pathology and Fundamentals of Toxicologic Pathology published by Academic Press/Elsevier. She has served as president of the Society of Toxicologic Pathology and the Society of Toxicology’s Comparative and Veterinary Specialty Section, as well as Councilor of the ACVP, board member of the ABT; as Associate Editor for Toxicological Sciences and for Toxicologic Pathology; as Editorial Board member for Fundamental and Applied Toxicology, Veterinary Pathology and Toxicologic Pathology.
She has served as a member on the USFDA Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee for the Center for Veterinary Medicine, the EPA’s FIFRA Science Advisory Panel, and National Academy of Sciences Committee. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the C.L. Davis Foundation for the Advancement of Veterinary and Comparative Pathology. She was awarded the Society of Toxicologic Pathology’s Achievement Award in 2007, the Midwest Regional Chapter – Society of Toxicology’s Kenneth DuBois Award in 2011, and the SUGUNA Jim Wolfensohn Achievement Award in 2013.
Evangelos Spyrakos
Dr. Evangelos Spyrakos holds an MSc and a PhD in Applied Physics and a BSc and an MSc in Oceanography. His primary research interests are related to Earth observation [retrieval of biogeochemical constituents in optically complex waters from satellite data and quantitative aspects of remote sensing]; monitoring and sensors technology [harmful algal blooms, oil spills; fluorescence; LiDAR; operational and forecasting systems, toxins]; inland and marine environments [physical & biogeochemical processes, ecological aspects] and energy [biodiesel production from microalgal biomass]. His research has been featured in outlets such as Remote Sensing of Environment; Progress in Oceanography; Harmful Algae; Hydrobiologia, inter alia. His work has been also presented at more than 80 national and international conferences. He has participated in the validation of ESA’s MERIS sensor (EO 623 ESA). He is also Co-I on two projects for the validation of Sentinel-3 OCLI level-2 data and PI of a project working with HICO [Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean, supported by NASA’s nternational Space Station (ISS) Program] data in inland waters. In 2012 he joined University of Stirling and the GloboLakes team as a post-doctoral researcher, where he is carrying out researches on validation and development of retrieval algorithms for lakes at regional and international scale, bio-optical characterisation of inland water bodies and establishment of a centralised database of Lake Bio-optical Measurements and Matchup Data for Remote Sensing.
Post-doctoral Research Assistant
Biological and Environmental Sciences
Katherine McMahon
My students and I study the microbial ecology of both natural and engineered systems. We use molecular tools to investigate microbial community structure and function in lakes and activated sludge. We also use high-frequency environmental sensor networks to measure important variables that we know influence bacterial communities. Sensor data provided through the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network guides our adaptive sampling efforts and provides rich contextual data for our studies of lake bacterial community ecology. We are particularly interested in phosphorus, nitrogen, and carbon cycling in lakes and how this relates to eutrophication and water quality. We are using highly resolved time series sampling of multiple lakes, combined with metagenomics and meta-trascriptomics to explore how different lineages of freshwater bacteria contribute to this cycling.
We are also engaged in metagenomic and post-genomic approaches to dissecting the metabolism of bacteria specialized in the sequestration of phosphorus in activated sludge. This information will ultimately lead to the construction of more predictive mechanistic and ecosystem-scale models to describe such processes as wastewater treatment and freshwater nutrient cycling.
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Bacteriology
University of Wisconsin Madison
Lin Li
PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION
2002 Brown University Degree: Ph. D. (Planetary Remote Sensing)
2001 Brown University Degree: M. E. (Electrical Engineering)
1989 Institute of Remote Sensing Application, Academia Sinica
Degree: M. S. (Geoscience Remote Sensing)
1986 Jilin University Degree: B. S. (Geology)
Professional Appointments
2010-present Associate Professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Indiana Univ.- Purdue Univ. Indianapolis
2004-2010 Assistant Professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Indiana Univ.- Purdue Univ. Indianapolis
2002-2004 Postdoctoral Research Scientist, University of California at Davis
1999-2000 Teaching Assistant, Brown University
1995-2002 Graduate Research Assistant, Brown University
1992-1995 Assistant Research Professor, Institute of Remote Sensing Application Academia Sinica, China
1989-1992 Assistant Research Scientist, Institute of Remote Sensing Application, Academia Sinica, China
Lin leads the faculty, staffs and students in the Planetary and Environmental Remote Sensing Lab (PERSL) form an interdisciplinary research team to perform experimental, theoretical and applied remote sensing studies such as mapping planetary surface composition for investigating the origin and geological evolution of a planet, and conducting radiative transfer modeling to derive biochemical and biophysical parameters of vegetation, physical and compositional properties of soil and snow, and water quality parameters for inland waters. Lin's research interest also involves the development and improvement of digital image processing algorithms for detection, classification and discrimination of materials as well as applying remote sensing and geospatial techniques for addressing the effects of global climate change. Lin has published more than 80 journal papers and book chapters, his research is well funded from Indiana State, NASA and USDA; Lin has been actively served in different NASA panels including NASA Mars Exploration and Planetary Geology programs, and as a reviewer for more than 40 academic journals (e.g. Remote Sensing of Environment, IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sending, Nature-geoscience and JGR).
Associate Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI)