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 CERTIFICATE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Course descriptions, as well as class schedules and other information about course offerings can be found on the University Registrar's course site located at:  http://explore.georgetown.edu/courses/index.cfm 

 

MICB 515: Microbiology of Biological Threat Agents & Emerging Infectious Diseases

This course will cover the normal immune response both innate and acquired to infectious agents. The microbiology will focus on NIH bioterrorism agents (categories A-C), which can be utilized as biological weapons and will focus on their structure, pathogenicity, and treatment. Viral agents will include Variola (Smallpox) and hemorrhagic fevers (Ebola and Lassa), and HIV/AIDS. The threat of plant and animal pathogens (agroterrorism) and the importance of biosurveillance will be covered. Bacterial agents to be discussed include B.anthracis, Yersinia pestis (plague), Francisella tularensis (tularemia) and Coxiella burnetii (Q fever) as well as fungal agents will be reviewed. Public policy issues include DC response and readiness to bioterrorism as well as the NIH response will be covered.

This course is taught by multiple experts in biohazardous threat agents, host response mechanisms, agroterrorism, and public health implications of bioterrorism. Contributing lecturers include the Certificate Program's director and Georgetown professor Dr. Rosenthal, PhD, Georgetown University Hospital’s Infectious Disease expert Dr. Timpone, MD and USDA’s Research Plant Pathologist Dr. Schaad, PhD, among many others.

MICB 519 (Dr. Collmann): Biosurveillance I: An Applied, Multidisciplinary Perspective

This course will critically examine the implications for biosurveillance of political and organizational controversies about defending against terrorism including bioterrorism. The course opens by studying the debate about terrorism as a type of asymmetrical warfare. What accounts for terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies? What is the relationship between foreign policy, law enforcement and warfare in our response to terrorism? What constraints, if any, should we apply to ourselves in responding to terrorism? For example, should the United States resume its bioweapons program if for no other reason than to understand our enemies? The course continues by examining the debate about reforming our governmental bureaucracy responsible for responding to terrorism. Why did we not recognize the emerging threat of the 9/11 attacks? What principles should we apply in reforming our intelligence and homeland defense organizations? The course concludes with close examination of sociological perspectives on designing effective organizations for responding to threats including biothreats. What should we do to improve how our existing food safety bureaucracy protects us against natural biothreats? Why should we expect, and prepare for failures even in organizations well prepared for contingencies? Can we design organizations capable of responding to novel threats and unanticipated events such as bioattacks? As a result of completing this course, students should gain an appreciation of the fundamentally political character of biosurveillance and biodefense including their technological dimensions.

MICB-523 (Dr. Lucey): Biodefense Public Health Countermeasures

This course will examine Public Health countermeasures against ten (10) infectious diseases ranging from pandemic influenza, SARS, Nipah virus, and Hantavirus to the six CDC Category A bioterrorism agents: Botulism, Ebola, Plague, Anthrax, Smallpox, and Tularemia (www.www.BePast.org).The Public Health countermeasures will include: vaccines, antimicrobials, risk communication, personal protective equipment (PPE), isolation and quarantine. Emphasis will be on learning from past outbreaks and new countermeasures (e.g., vaccines) to help prepare us better for the next biological threat, including with an unknown organism (?Disease X?). Particular focus will be on H5N1 and other avian influenza viruses that have infected humans as of 2005, the SARS outbreak of 2003, and the anthrax attacks of 2001.

MICB 525 (Neal Pollard, JD): Homeland Security 2015

This course will examine threats to the US homeland, how they might evolve over the next ten years, and the consequent implications for science, technology and homeland security. The course will examine the motivations of non-state actors to threaten the US homeland, and how those actors might use technology and exploit vulnerabilities to attack the US. The course will also examine the role of science and technology in countering these threats and securing the homeland, and the competing policy interests that affect decision-making for investments in science and technology. The course will give students insight into the nexus of science, technology, and policy, and the underlying competing interests that must be balanced to optimize the potential of science and technology to benefit and enrich the United States while protecting it.

 

 

 

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The department occupies 12,000 square feet in the Medical-Dental Building and has access to additional facilities in the Medical Center.  In addition, the department has a library/conference room, general purpose laboratories, and offices, as well as well-equipped research laboratories that contain laminar flow hoods, biosafety cabinets, beta and gamma spectrometers, spectrophotometers, plate readers, ultracentrifuges, controlled-environment incubators, cold rooms, tissue culture facilities, luminescent microscopes, etc.  The department is adjacent to the Dahlgren Medical Library and the Research Resource Facility.

William A. Fonzi, PhD; Professor of Microbiology & Immunology and Graduate Studies Director.  Professor Fonzi received his doctoral degree from Texas A&M University. He is the primary academic advisor for MS and PhD students in Microbiology & Immunology and Graduate Studies Director for all programs in the department. His current research interests include identification and characterization of the genes and gene products that contribute to the virulence of Candida albicans using molecular genetic techniques.

Leonard Rosenthal, PhD, Professor of Microbiology & Immunology & Certificate Program Director.  Professor Rosenthal is an AIDS and cancer researcher who has focused on the association of herpes viruses with human cancer as well as their role as co-factors in the progression of AIDS. At Georgetown, Dr. Rosenthal teaches virology to medical, physiology, and graduate students and directs an interdisciplinary biomedical sciences graduate program. In August, 1990, he organized the 15 th International Herpesvirus Workshop at Georgetown attended by over 800 researchers. Dr Rosenthal’s laboratory most recently has identified the kaposin oncogene from HHV-8 and is studying its role in Kaposi’s sarcoma. In 1994, Dr Rosenthal founded the Global AIDS and Cancer Foundation (GACF), a non-profit organization dedicated to partnership in research, training, and public health. A key goal of the foundation is promoting AIDS awareness among DC area high school students. Since 1997, GACF has sponsored annual AIDS awareness workshops for metropolitan DC area high school students and teachers. Since then, over 1,300 students and teachers have come to Georgetown University Medical Center, have participated in these workshops, and have taken back with them the knowledge they have gained to set up their own in-school AIDS awareness programs. In September, 2002, Dr Rosenthal, along with Dr Lucey, organized the first GU/MedStar Workshop on Bioterrorism attended by over 500 medical, physiology, nursing, and graduate students. More recently, Dr. Rosenthal has organized a Special Series on Biodefense, which includes eight expert presentations as part of the popular Mini Medical School forum for Georgetown Medical Center faculty, staff, and students, as well as for the community at large. Dr. Rosenthal is also Program Director for the MS in Biohazardous Threat Agents & Emerging Infectious Diseases and for the on-campus certificate program in Biodefense & Public Policy.

Dr. Collmann, Associate Professor, Department of Radiology, Georgetown University, obtained his Ph.D in Social Anthropology from the University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia. Understanding the effect of bureaucracy and other complex forms of organization on everyday life constitutes his main intellectual interest. The results of his research on social change among Australian Aborigines have been published in numerous articles and as a book, Fringedwellers and Welfare: the Aboriginal response to bureaucracy. Since returning to the United States in 1980, he has worked as an administrator and researcher on issues in high medical technology. While at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, he managed the first clinical Positron Emission Tomography Center and edited Clinical Positron Emission Tomography with his colleagues at UTMCK. He completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Clinical Medical Ethics, Department of Philosophy, University of Tennessee that produced published research work on the social organization of academic biotechnology laboratories. He joined the Department of Radiology, Georgetown University in January 1992. He served as the team leader for the data security and patient confidentiality section of Project Phoenix, a NLM funded project on telemedicine in hemodialysis at Georgetown University. He serves as a medical ethicist for the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Ft. Detrick, Maryland as part of the Defense Health Information Assurance Program. In this capacity, he functions as an advisor to the HIPAA compliance effort of the Department of Defense. He also functions as an advisor on health information assurance to the Air Force Surgeon General. He serves as editor of The CPRI Toolkit: Managing Information Security in Health Care and lectures widely on health information assurance. Other courses he teaches at Georgetown University include anthropology of medicine, science and technology and Australian culture.

 William Daddio, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Microbiology & Immunology  

Bill Daddio is Associate Director for Protection/Chief, U.S. Mint Police. He is responsible for directing all protection programs and law enforcement functions for all the U.S. Mints facilities located in Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, PA; West Point, NY; Denver, CO; San Francisco, CA and the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, KY. During his over 20 year tenure, the U.S. Mint Police have developed into a nationally recognized law enforcement agency, and the U.S. Mint Police was awarded the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial?s Distinguished Service Award in 2001. He currently is an Adjunct Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Georgetown Medical School and Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Georgetown University where he teaches courses in bio-terrorism and terrorism. He has been awarded the Vi-centennial Medal by the University, and the Bunn award for faculty excellence. His law enforcement and academic interests focus on understanding terrorism, mitigating bio-terrorism, developing methods that can improve cooperation to prevent international crime, and examining survivor issues, especially those of relatives of police officer deaths. Dr. Daddio provides consultation services to numerous countries on the protection and transportation of high-value assets.

 

Neal Pollard, JD, Adjunct Professor of Microbiology & Immunology.  Mr. Pollard serves on the adjunct faculty of Georgetown University. He develops and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in technology, homeland security, and intelligence for the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Department of Science, Technology, and International Affairs; the School of Medicine Department of Microbiology and Immunology; and the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. He is a faculty member of the Georgetown University Biosecurity Institute, and is chair of Georgetown's Homeland Security 2015 project. Mr. Pollard has lectured or published for Oklahoma University, George Mason University, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of Justice, the US Intelligence Community, the National Defense University, the US Joint Military Intelligence College, the National Research Council, the British and Swedish Ministries of Defence, the Swedish Agency for Civil Emergency Planning, the Swedish Confederation of Employers, and numerous academic journals and conferences. He has authored several monographs, and is currently co-authoring a case-book on homeland security law, with Prof. John Norton Moore.