Daniel B. Neill, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the H.J. Heinz III College of Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Event and Pattern Detection Laboratory. He holds courtesy appointments in the Machine Learning Department and Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon, and is an adjunct professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Biomedical Informatics. He received his M.Phil. from Cambridge University in 2002, his M.S. from Carnegie Mellon in 2004, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon in 2006. Professor Neill is the author of more than thirty publications on the topic of event and pattern detection, focusing primarily on methods for the early and accurate detection of emerging outbreaks of disease. Detection methods developed by Professor Neill and colleagues have been incorporated into deployed disease surveillance systems in the U.S., Canada, India, and Sri Lanka, and his CrimeScan software is in day-to-day operational use by the Chicago Police Department in order to predict and prevent emerging hot-spots of violent crime. Professor Neill has been an active contributor, reviewer, and program committee member for the ISDS Annual Conference, twice serving as chair of the Analytical Methods track. He received the Best Research Presentation award at the 2005 National Syndromic Surveillance Conference for his work on Bayesian spatial scan statistics. Professor Neill’s work has been funded by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, including an NSF CAREER award (2010) and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2002-2005). He was recently named one of the top ten artificial intelligence researchers to watch by IEEE Intelligent Systems.
Karl Soetebier, MA, is the Technical Lead for the Georgia Department of Public Health’s electronic disease surveillance system (SENDSS). In this capacity, since 2002, he has been responsible for all technical aspects of the development, implementation, and operation of the Georgia Syndromic Surveillance Program’s technical infrastructure. Additionally, in support of Georgia’s public health preparedness activities, Karl has overseen the development and implementation of several other modules of the SENDSS system including Outbreak Management, Electronic Laboratory Reporting, Tuberculosis Patient Management, Emergency Medical Services, and General Notifiable Disease Reporting. Karl has 8 years of experience in developing disease surveillance systems and brings nearly 15 years of professional software, web, and database development expertise to the effort. Karl is a founding member of the ISDS DiSTRIBuTE workgroup and is a member of the Distribute Community Advisory Committee. He is an active member of the ISDS Meaningful Use workgroup and, along with a number of ISDS conference presentations, he has served as the conference’s technical track chair for the 2007 ISDS conference and again as co-chair of the Informatics track for the 2010 conference. Karl holds a Master’s degree in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University.
Pre-Conference Workshop Chair
Aaron Kite-Powell, MS, Surveillance Epidemiologist, Florida Department of Health
Track Chairs
Informatics: Bryant Karras, MD, Public Health Informatics Officer (Sr. Epi.), State of Washington Department of Health
Research: Luiz Duczmal, PhD, Department of Statistics, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Practice: Michael Coletta, MPH, Lead Informatics Analyst, National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO)
Novel: Philip Polgreen, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Infectious Disease Faculty, University of Iowa Health Care
Scientific Program Committee
Taj Azarian, MPH, Public Health Preparedness & Surveillance Epidemiologist, Duval County Health Department
Atar Baer, PhD, Epidemiologist, Communicable Disease Epidemiology and Immunization Program, Public Health – Seattle & King County
John Brownstein, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Director, Computational Epidemiology Group, Children’s Hosptial Boston
David Buckeridge, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University
Mike Conway, PhD, Postdoc, Mayo Clinic
Rick Davies, MD, PhD, Professor of Cardiology, Ottawa Heart Institute
Julia Gunn, RN, MPH, Director, Communicable Disease Control Division, Infecious Disease Bureau, Boston Public Health Commission
Amy Ising, MSIS, NC DETECT Program Director, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Michael Klompas, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute
Wayne Loschen, MS, Computer Science, Software Engineer, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Don Olson, MPH, Research Director, International Society for Disease Surveillance
Marc Paladini, MPH, Director, Syndromic Surveillance Unit, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Henry Rolka, Associate Director for Information Exchange, Office of Critical Information Integration and Exchange, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Louise Wilson, MD, Consultant in Public Health Medicine, NHS Torbay Care Trust