Officers

Chair:

Kara Dean

is a Staff Fellow with the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). She holds a doctoral degree in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy from Michigan State University, and has been a member of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) since 2018. Her research interests include quantitative microbial risk assessment, water quality, pathogen persistence, and dose response modeling.

kara.dean@fda.hhs.gov | Google Scholar 

Vice Chair:

Hao Pang

is currently a Biologist – Risk Modeler with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). He earned a M.S. and a Ph.D. degree in Nutrition & Food Science from University of Maryland. His research focuses on developing risk-based tools that synthesize a wide diversity of data and information from different domains to provide a multi-faceted understanding of food safety risks, influencing factors, and the potential impact of current and proposed mitigations and controls to reduce the risk. His expertise includes quantitative microbial risk assessment, data analytics and visualization, machine learning, and multi-criteria decision analysis.

Senior Secretary:

Dr. Kerry Hamilton

is an Associate Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment with a joint appointment in the Biodesign Institute Center for Environmental Health Engineering at Arizona State University. She received her doctoral degree in Environmental Engineering from Drexel University and Master’s of Health Science (MHS) degree in Environmental and Occupational Hygiene from Johns Hopkins University. 

She was a Fulbright Scholar to Australia and Public Health Fellow at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Her research focuses on assessing and reducing health risks from pathogens transmitted by environmental exposures.

Secretary:

Dr. Hunter Quon

is a postdoctoral research scholar in the School of Sustainability and the Built Environment with a joint appointment in the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Irvine, and his B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Oregon State University.

His research uses quantitative microbial risk assessment, simulation-based modeling, and social approaches to evaluate microbial and chemical risks in drinking water, building plumbing systems, and healthcare and sustainable water systems, with particular emphasis on waterborne pathogens and antimicrobial resistance. He also serves as a volunteer with the Phoenix Water Wranglers.

Ujjwol Subedi

is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Maryland, College Park. He holds a M.S. degree in Nutrition and Food Science from the University of Maryland and a B.Tech in Food Technology from Tribhuvan University, Nepal, and brings over eight years of professional experience in food safety research and laboratory practice in Nepal.

His research focuses on developing and evaluating natural antimicrobial and nanoemulsion based interventions to control foodborne pathogens in fresh produce, integrating applied microbiology and risk-based approaches to improve produce safety and protect public health.

usubedi@umd.edu | LinkedIn Profile | Google Scholar

Kate Wernicke

is a dual PhD student in Biosystems Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy at Michigan State University. She holds a BS in Biosystems Engineering with a concentration in Biomedical Engineering from Michigan State University. She has been an active researcher at MSU’s Risk Modeling Lab since 2021. Her research focuses on quantitative risk assessment for engineering controls primarily in water space.

wernick1@msu.edu | LinkedIn Profile | MSU Risk Modeling Lab