DAy at a

glance

12:30 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.

Lunch

Provided by

Rice University

&

Networking

12:00 pm

NWSS UPDATES

Martha Johnson

MODERATORS, SPEAKERS & PANELISTS

Click on a name below to view their bio

Kathryn Catlin

Kathryn Catlin is the Wastewater Systems Manager for the City of Harrison, Arkansas. She has a BS in Leadership & Ethics from John Brown University, an MBA from Purdue University, and holds Arkansas Class IV Wastewater, Advanced Industrial, Class IV Water Treatment, and Class IV Water Distribution licenses. Throughout her 40 years of experience in the municipal and industrial environmental fields, her steadfast goal has been to advance the knowledge and opportunity of individuals within the field. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Arkansas Environmental Academy; developed and taught AEA laboratory courses; developed and implemented industrial pretreatment programs and laboratory SOPs and QA/QC procedures; and served on multiple environmental association committees. Kathryn’s environmental career trajectory began with a laboratory technician position then advanced through the ranks from a laboratory manager, to a pretreatment coordinator, then an environmental manager for a food manufacturer, to her present management position in Harrison. While she has enjoyed an active and varied career in the environmental field, her greatest passion is her family (2 sons, 5 grandchildren, 1 great-grandson, 5 siblings and extended family) and serving in her church.

Michelle Crum

Dr. Crum is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Education, Interim Chair for the Department of Preventive Medicine and Population Health, and Administrative Lab Director for the Public Health Laboratory, all at the East Texas UT Tyler School of Medicine. She has experience in molecular biology, virology, and pandemic preparedness, and has designed and is co-course director of Invaders and Defense (Microbiology and Immunology) at the newly formed UT Tyler School of Medicine. Her interests include emerging and remerging disease, pandemic preparedness, response, mitigation and prevention, and the promotion of health literacy against these threats. In 2021, Dr. Crum began a wastewater surveillance program in 7 mostly rural counties of East Texas to detect and sequence SARS CoV-2 and other pathogens and is currently working to increase the scope of the project for utilization of disease forecasting.

Nathaniel Culberson

Nathaniel is the Data Coordinator for the Kentucky Wastewater Surveillance System program. He joined the team in December of 2023. Nathaniel graduated from Western Governors University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, majoring in software development.

Kaavya Domakonda

Kaavya Domakonda boasts nearly two decades of dedicated experience spearheading environmental initiatives. Presently, Kaavya assumes responsibility for overseeing the Houston Health Department's Data Science and Wastewater Surveillance programs. In this role she is engaged in wastewater surveillance endeavors, leading comprehensive efforts encompassing sample collection, educational outreach, effective communication strategies, and rigorous data analysis. Her collaborative approach extends to liaising with laboratories and facilities to ensure the efficacy and accuracy of her initiatives.

Virginia Guidry

Virginia Guidry has been the head of the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch in the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) since January 2019. She is also the NCDHHS Environmental Justice Lead and the director of the North Carolina Wastewater Monitoring Network. She has a PhD in Epidemiology and a Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a BS in Medical Technology from the University of Delaware. She has worked on environmental health and environmental justice issues in North Carolina since 2003, including experience in community-based research, communications, and applied epidemiology.

Loren Hopkins

Dr. Loren Hopkins is the City of Houston Chief Environmental Science Officer, Chief of the Bureau of Community and Children’s Environmental Health at the Houston Health Department, and a Professor in the Practice in the Department of Statistics at Rice University. In this dual capacity, she conducts applied research and uses the results to inform policies at the City of Houston to improve the health of the community. She leads the city’s COVID-19 data science team and the wastewater surveillance team.

Martha Johnson

Martha Johnson is a public health expert with over twelve years of experience in various roles within the non-profit sector, government agencies, and academic institutions. Martha obtained a master’s in public health from Lamar University and currently works with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS), supporting State, Tribal, Local, and Territories as a Public Health Analyst.

Martha's role involves providing technical assistance and consultation to state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments and organizations involved in NWSS. She helps agencies establish and optimize wastewater surveillance programs that monitor for SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens of public health concern. Also, she works closely with utility partners to increase engagement and ensure partnership sustainability.

Her extensive experience and education have given her the knowledge and skills to improve population health outcomes and address complex public health challenges. She is passionate about applying evidence-based solutions to advance health equity and promote community health and well-being.

Richard McMullen

Dr. McMullen holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, a Master of Science degree in Agronomy with an emphasis in soil chemistry, and a doctorate degree in Crop, Soil and Environmental Science with an emphasis in applied soil physics from the University of Arkansas. His expertise relates to broiler litter application rate effects on water quality and carbon dioxide emissions from soil. His post-doctoral work related to seasonal water tables of the Mississippi River and animal waste management in the Buffalo River watershed. He is currently enrolled in the Doctor of Public Health in Public Health Leadership program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). He currently serves as the Associate Director for Science for the Division for Local Public Health and the State Environmental Health Director at the Arkansas Department of Health and serves as an adjunct assistant professor at the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at UAMS. He serves as a Commissioner of the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission. He is currently President of the Arkansas Association of Professional Soil Classifiers and President of the Arkansas Society of Professional Sanitarians. Previously, he has worked in quality assurance with Tyson; soil conservation with the USDA-NRCS; and an elected official at the City of Johnson, AR. He holds numerous certifications and licenses and is a member of numerous organizations, including Gamma Sigma Delta and Alpha Chi Sigma. Dr. McMullen is a native of Fayetteville, AR.

Cristina Meza

Cristina Meza serves as an epidemiologist and wastewater surveillance coordinator for the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH). Cristina first joined DPH as a CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellow and upon graduating, joined a multidisciplinary team in developing Georgia DPH’s wastewater surveillance program, GA NWSS. In April 2022, GA NWSS initiated wastewater sampling across 5 sites and has since then expanded wastewater surveillance across 14 of the 18 public health districts in the state. As the program continues to expand, Cristina and the entire GA NWSS team continue to prioritize partner collaboration and communication as the foundation in their journey to build a long-standing and representative wastewater surveillance system for the state of Georgia.

Bina Nayak

Bina Nayak is the Water Research Project Manager at Pinellas County Utilities where she manages research projects with government organizations, engineering firms, and academia to expand the knowledge of water quality research that will benefit the utility and the water industry. She also assists the county water and wastewater treatment plants on internal projects such as corrosion control, disinfection byproduct management, and process options for wastewater treatment. Active on Project Advisory Committees for The Water Research Foundation and in the Florida Section of the American Water Works Association, Bina has a PhD degree in microbiology from the University of South Florida.

Rachel Poretsky

Rachel Poretsky is an Associate Professor in Biological Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she has been since 2013. She studies microbial ecology, diversity, community structure, and interactions in the ocean, freshwater lakes and rivers, and wastewater. She is currently the scientific lead for Chicago’s and Illinois’ wastewater surveillance efforts where she partners with the Discovery Partners Institute, Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University, Rush University Medical Center, and the Chicago and Illinois Departments of Public Health. She holds a BS from Brandeis University and a PhD from the University of Georgia. Prior to UIC, she did postdocs at Caltech in Geology and Planetary Sciences and at Georgia Tech in Environmental Engineering.

Jenny Sabater

Jennifer Sabater is a manager in the Water Environment Federation's Wastewater Surveillance Program, where she develops training materials, workshops, videos, webpages, and other materials related to the use of wastewater testing to inform public health action. Previously, she conducted research on water quality and antibiotic-resistant bacteria and collaborated on public education projects with government agencies. Jennifer holds a master's degree in biology and is certified by the American Society for Clinical Pathology as a medical laboratory scientist in microbiology.

Rebecca Schneider

Rebecca Schneider is a Staff Analyst at the City of Houston Health Department. She started in this role in May 2020 and joined the wastewater surveillance program in December 2020. In this role, she works with both the Public Health Lead and the Statistics Lead of the program to develop and improve the data-to-action process within of the wastewater surveillance program.

Lauren Stadler

Lauren Stadler is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University. She is ​​an environmental engineer whose research focuses on wastewater-based epidemiology, environmental antibiotic resistance, wastewater and resource recovery, and environmental synthetic biology. She has been collaborating with the Houston Health Department since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to develop methods, implement, and operationalize a city-wide wastewater monitoring system that informs public health action in real-time. Stadler is an NSF CAREER awardee, Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM 2D Engineering Scholar, and Gulf Coast Early Career Research Scholar. Before joining the faculty at Rice, Dr. Stadler earned her B.S. from Swarthmore College and M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Michigan.

WORKSHOP SAFETY & SECURITY

Location: Ralph S. O’Conner Building for Engineering & Science

Campanile Road, Houston, TX 77005

The Rice University Police Department dispatch number is 713-348-6000.

Rice University has a campus-wide crisis management planning and alert system.  For information, visit:

https://emergency.rice.edu/

https://emergency.rice.edu/health-emergency

https://rupd.rice.edu/

See this link for a map of campus emergency resources and shelter in place (SIP) sites.

The SIP sites for the O’Connor building are:

interior hallways, floors 1 & 2 (where no windows are present).

Accessibility information is available here.

All Rice buildings have alarm and sprinkler systems. Evacuation maps and emergency exits are posted. Security cameras are located in parking lots and throughout campus.

Rice University and workshop event hotels are centrally located to the Texas Medical Center, home to 21 hospitals. The closest hospitals are Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, Harris Health Ben Taub, and Houston Methodist.

1. The closest pharmacies that are not part of a hospital are the CVS locations at 2266 W Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX 77030 and 2266 W Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX 77030, CVS at 6011 Kirby Dr, Houston, TX, 77005 and the Walgreens at 2605 W Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX 77025
   

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