Opening Remarks
Iman A. Hakim, MD, PhD, MPH
Dean, Professor, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health
University of Arizona

Dr. Iman Hakim is a renowned global public health expert with over 25 years of experience in public health, medicine, and international collaboration. She currently serves as the dean of the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona. Dr. Hakim is the Mel & Enid Zuckerman Endowed Chair in Public Health. She holds joint appointments in the School of Nutrition Sciences and Wellness at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the College of Medicine.

As the founding director of the Global Health Institute, she developed a framework for successful education and research partnerships in global health focusing on training the next generation of global health experts.

Dr. Hakim’s research focuses on health promotion across the life span, dietary interventions, and the role of gene-environment and gene-nutrition interactions in disease prevention. Internationally recognized for her translational research and work on the role of bioactive food compounds such as green tea and d-limonene in modulation of oxidative damage and prevention of chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes.

Dr. Hakim earned her medical degree from Cairo University in Egypt where she completed her Pediatric residency. She received her PhD in child health and nutrition from Ain-Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, and her MPH from the University of Arizona.

Welcome from the Directors
Frank von Hippel, PhD
Professor of Environmental Health Sciences
Director, One Health Research Initiative
University of Arizona

Frank von Hippel is a professor of environmental health sciences in the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and the lead of the One Health Research Initiative at the University of Arizona. Frank was born and raised in Alaska, received his A.B. in biology at Dartmouth College in 1989, and his Ph.D. in integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1996. He taught for Columbia University (1996-1999), the University of Alaska Anchorage (2000-2016), and Northern Arizona University (2016-2021) before moving to the University of Arizona in 2021. Frank has taught ecology field courses in over twenty countries, and conducted research in the Americas, Africa and Australia. He conducts research at the nexus of ecotoxicology, mechanisms of toxicity, and public health, with a focus on vulnerable communities. Frank uses locally occurring wildlife and laboratory animals as models for human exposure and disease, and he employs community-engaged research approaches. Frank is the author of The Chemical Age (University of Chicago Press, 2020) and he is the host of the Science History Podcast.

David M. Engelthaler, PhD
Executive Director, TGen North, ASU Health Observatory

Dave Engelthaler is a proud Arizona native and has been an active researcher and leader in Public Health in the Southwest for over 30 years. He is currently the Executive Director of the ASU Health Observatory and a Professor and the Director of TGen North, the infectious disease division of the non-profit Translational Genomics Research Institute. Dave’s TGen team coordinated the statewide SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequencing of the first year of the pandemic and conducted clinical testing for tens of thousands of underserved Arizonans, especially in Tribal and rural communities. The majority of Dave’s work over the past three decades has been advancing the state of public health research and application, particularly with next generation One Health science. Dave was previously the Arizona State Epidemiologist and State Biodefense Coordinator, a biologist for both the CDC and the U.S. Forest Service. He has published over 180 scientific papers and chapters on epidemiology, disease ecology, and genetics, which have been cited nearly 12,000 times, and he has over two dozen patented inventions, ranging from new antimicrobial drugs, to diagnostics, to software tools. Dave has testified before U.S. Congress and has briefed senators, congressmen, governors, state legislators and mayors on public health and health care issues.  He sits on numerous local and national boards and commissions and had started both for-profit and non-profit businesses, including STEM City, which supports Flagstaff, AZ as America’s first STEM community.

Mark Smolinski, MD, MPH
Executive Director, Ending Pandemics Academy
Jeff Skoll Endowed Chair in Ending Pandemics
Professor of Practice, Public Health
University of Arizona

Mark Smolinski has been applying innovative solutions for early detection advanced warning, and prevention of epidemic and pandemic threats for over 30 years. Mark founded the non-profit Ending Pandemics that co-created novel disease surveillance systems in partnership with governments, NGOs, academia and the private sector on five continents. He previously served as Chief Medical Officer for the Skoll Global Threats Fund, startup team for Google.org, and Vice President for Biological Programs at NTI, a public charity directed by CNN founder Ted Turner and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. Mark has worked for the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Surgeon General. Mark is board-certified in Preventive Medicine and Public Health with an M.D. from the University of Michigan and an M.P.H. from the University of Arizona.

One Health in Academia
Kristen Pogreba Brown, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor, Epidemiology
Faculty Lead, MPH One Health Program
University of Arizona

Kristen Pogreba Brown is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Prior to joining the faculty, Dr. Pogreba-Brown was an Epidemiologist with the College as the director of the Student Aid for Field Epidemiology Response (SAFER) team.  In addition to continuing to oversee the SAFER program, her research projects are focused on food-borne diseases and improving methodology to respond to outbreak investigations.  She is currently working on a project to identify the risk factors related to food-borne infection as well as the risk factors related to specific chronic outcomes following acute disease.  She has recently initiated a One Health Program at the University to form collaborative research teams from across campus and develop a graduate level certificate program.  She is also actively involved in public health preparedness activities, specifically for large events.

Dr. Pogreba-Brown works with various county health departments in Arizona as well as the state health department to aid in outbreak investigations and serves on the state’s Food-borne Taskforce Committee.

Implementing a One Health Curriculum: Challenges and Lessons Learned
Jennifer Wishnie, DVM, MSc, MPH, DACVPM
Associate Professor of Practice
Director, One Health/Veterinary Public Heath Residency
College of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Jennifer Wishnie is an Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Arizona, College of Veterinary Medicine. She leads the One Health course series and oversees One Health programming, including a veterinary public health residency. Her expertise spans food production, food safety, antibiotic use and resistance, veterinary public health, and One Health.

Dr. Wishnie earned her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Saskatchewan in 2004. She completed an internship with the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris and a residency in Veterinary Public Health, along with a Master of Public Health from the University of Minnesota in 2010. She is board-certified by the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine.

Previously, Dr. Wishnie was a faculty member at California Polytechnic University and Director of Producer and Public Health for the National Pork Board.

Arizona One Health Needs Assessment
Kathryn Burr, DVM, MPH
Acting State Public Health Veterinarian 
CDC Career Epidemiology Field Officer
Arizona Department of Health Services

Dr. Katy Burr received her Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Washington State University in 2014. After working as a private practice veterinarian, she completed her Master’s in Public Health from University of Washington in 2022 with a focus in One Health. Prior to her current role, Dr. Burr was a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Fellow jointly assigned to Maricopa County Department of Public Health and Arizona Department of Health Services from 2022-2024. She is currently a CDC Career Epidemiology Field Officer assigned to Arizona State Department of Health Services where she serves as the acting State Public Health Veterinarian and assists in One Health activities, epidemiological investigations, and all-hazard response.

Antibiotic Use Practices in Animal Shelters
Paulina Colombo
PhD Student in Epidemiology
University of Arizona

Paulina Colombo is a PhD candidate in Epidemiology at the University of Arizona’s Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Her research focuses on healthcare epidemiology, infection prevention, and antimicrobial stewardship, with a particular emphasis on lower-resourced and congregate settings. As a Graduate Research Associate, she supports the deployment of wearable sensors to better understand infection transmission pathways within long-term care and assists in mixed methods analyses of antimicrobial prescribing patterns within animal shelters. Her doctoral dissertation employs qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to investigate the role of interfacility transfer in the burden of multidrug-resistant organisms. Paulina is an Associate—Infection Prevention and Control (a-IPC) and holds a graduate certificate in healthcare informatics. She also serves as a Data Management and Sharing Plan Ambassador for the University of Arizona Libraries. Her academic work is complemented by professional experience in the pharmaceutical sector, where she has contributed to global patient safety and real-world data analysis.

Sewage Sampling at the Human–Animal Interface
Royani Saha
PhD Student in Environmental Science
University of Arizona

Royani Saha is a Graduate Research Assistant with the Environment, Exposure Science, and Risk Assessment Center (ESRAC) and a student member of SCORCH. She participated in the Global Flu View (GFV) 2nd Spark Cohort and is currently involved in the project GFV Hyperlocal: Integrating Environmental Factors for Omni-channel Flu Surveillance. This work focuses on strengthening influenza surveillance by integrating real-time environmental indicators like wastewater-based epidemiology, and participatory surveillace community reporting, with traditional surveillance systems. By enabling hyperlocal, real-time monitoring, GFV Hyperlocal supports earlier outbreak detection, data-driven public health interventions, and locally tailored response strategies, bridging environmental science and public health to improve seasonal flu preparedness.

One Health Clinics
Ellen Santos, PhD
Program Manager
Pima County Health Department

Dr. Ellen Santos is an Epidemiology Program Manager overseeing the One Health program at the Pima County Health Department (PCHD). Dr. Santos oversees vector-borne and zoonotic disease surveillance, environmental epidemiology, and the Healthy Companions One Health Clinic. Prior to joining PCHD, Dr. Santos was an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Saint Louis University where her research focused on vector-borne diseases including dengue and Chagas disease.

OH-MEMA: One Health Mixed-Effects Modeling and Analytics
Aseel Basheer, PhD
Postdoc Research Associate, Data Institute for Societal Challenges
University of Oklahoma

Aseel Basheer is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Data Institute for Societal Challenges (DISC) at the University of Oklahoma. She received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Oklahoma, where her work focused on visualization and data-driven approaches for complex, real-world problems.
Her research adopts a One Health perspective, integrating human, animal, and environmental data through machine learning and visual analytics to support disease surveillance, forecasting, and public health decision-making. Aseel’s work emphasizes the translation of complex, heterogeneous data into interpretable, actionable insights for researchers, public health practitioners, and policymakers.
She has contributed to interdisciplinary projects involving wastewater-based epidemiology, environmental drivers of disease spread, and syndromic surveillance systems, with a focus on usability, transparency, and decision support. Her broader research interests include data visualization and analytics, human–computer interaction, and digital humanities, particularly where computational methods intersect with societal challenges.

Valley Fever in New Mexico
Morgan Gorris, PhD
Information Systems and Modeling Group (A-1)
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM

Dr. Gorris (she/her) is an Earth system scientist who studies GeoHealth (the nexus of humans, health, and the Earth system), One Health (the interconnection of human, animal, and environmental health), and disease ecology. This includes modeling and mapping where diseases are a threat, forecasting the number of disease cases, and assessing risks to health through the lens of global security. Dr. Gorris is a Staff Scientist within the Information Systems and Modeling group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, supporting work on environmental and health security. She was an author for the Human Health Chapter of the 5th National Climate Assessment and actively serves on several committees, including the GeoHealth section of the American Geophysical Union, the Dust Alliance for North America, and the US Climate Variability and Predictability Program.

Multi-Jurisdictional Collaborations and Epidemiologic Approaches to Address Extreme Heat
Meaghan Batchelor, MPH
Epidemiologist 
Principal Population Health Data Scientist
Knowledge Enterprise, Health Observatory
Arizona State University

Meaghan Batchelor is a Population Health Data Scientist and Epidemiologist at the ASU Health Observatory, where she translates complex data into actionable insights and engaging visual narratives that inform public health decision-making at the human-animal-environment interface.
Previously, she served as a Climate and Health Epidemiologist with the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, where she transformed how heat-related health impacts are communicated and understood. She built interactive surveillance systems and public-facing dashboards that made critical health data accessible to diverse audiences, from emergency responders to community members, enabling faster, more informed responses to extreme heat events.
Her public health career began during the COVID-19 pandemic as a disease investigator. She holds an MPH from the University of Arizona and will begin a PhD in Global Health at ASU in Fall 2026. Her work focuses on bridging the gap between advanced research and practical application, making epidemiological findings accessible and actionable through innovative data visualization and science communication.

Future of Wastewater Surveillance
Crystal Hepp, PhD
Associate Professor
Immunology and Microbial Genomics Division
TGen North

Dr. Crystal Hepp has a background in evolutionary biology and genomics, and her lab focuses heavily on using environmental surveillance of pathogens, especially viruses, to understand their spread over time and space. Her Ph.D. studies were conducted at Arizona State University, where she primarily worked on evolutionary comparisons of Human Immunodeficiency Virus to better characterize spread into the Americas. Her postdoctoral research was conducted at Northern Arizona University, and she was involved in intra-patient studies of Burkholderia pseudomallei, where genomic analyses indicated that an ongoing long-term infection resulted in adaptation of the pathogen to the human host, primarily through gene loss. She is part of the NAU faculty body in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems as an Associate Professor and Associate Director of Research, as well as an Associate Professor at TGen North, where her surveillance-based studies have again focused on RNA viruses that can be tracked in the environment and potentially used for outbreak mitigation.

Wildlife Surveillance: Challenges and New Opportunities
Leigh Combrink, BSc, MSc, PhD
Assistant Professor - Wildlife Disease and Conservation
School of Natural Resources and the Environment
University of Arizona

Dr. Leigh Combrink's research centers on infectious disease ecology, the role of host associated microbiomes in health, and the impacts of climate and landscape change on disease dynamics in wildlife and human populations. Dr. Combrink’s broader research program explores using microbiomes as non invasive indicators of wildlife health and she is currently examining microbial biomarkers in mountain gorillas, Sonoran pronghorn, bobcats, coyotes, bats, and numerous avian species such as Northern Bobwhites, Gambel’s Quail, and Wood Ducks. With a strong commitment to One Health, she also studies zoonotic diseases, including predictive modeling showing West Nile Virus activity throughout Arizona, and the links between wildlife and human health at the wildland-urban interface.

Digital Biomarkers, Wearables, and Other Tracking & Monitoring Systems
Onicio B. Leal-Neto, MSc, PhD
Assistant Research Professor - Digital Epidemiology
University of Arizona

Onicio B. Leal-Neto is biomedical scientist, holds a MSc and PhD in Public Health and Epidemiology. Currently, he is the leader of Global Flu View and Assistant Research Professor at the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Arizona. He is also responsible for the AI for Public Health Initiative, leading the PH & AI Summer School and new course offerings on AI and Public Health. His research focuses on public health innovation and the application of technologies for population health using artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing, wearables and data science methods.

Climate Health
Kacey C. Ernst, PhD, MPH
Professor of Epidemiology
Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics 
University of Arizona

Dr. Kacey C. Ernst, PhD, MPH, is a Professor of Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the health impacts of climate and weather extremes, with particular emphasis on extreme heat, mosquito-borne diseases, and the ways environmental change shapes infectious and chronic disease risk across human, animal, and environmental systems. She has led and collaborated on interdisciplinary projects spanning the U.S. Southwest, the U.S.–Mexico border region, the Caribbean, and East Africa, working in transdisciplinary teams including public health agencies, community partners, climatologists, behavioral scientists, and environmental scientists.
Dr. Ernst’s work integrates data science, field-based epidemiology, and community-engaged methods to improve surveillance, risk communication, and prevention strategies in climate-vulnerable communities. She has been involved in the development of participatory surveillance tools, population-based studies of vectorborne diseases, climate and health, and applied research aimed at informing policy and practice. She brings a practical perspective on translating climate and health research into actionable strategies that support resilience, equity, and real-world decision-making.

Closing Remarks
Jason A. Wertheim, MD, PhD
Vice Dean, Research and Graduate Studies
Professor, Surgery & Biomedical Engineering
Associate Vice President for Research and Partnerships – Health Research
University of Arizona

Dr. Wertheim joined The University of Arizona from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, where he served as vice chair for research in the Department of Surgery and associate director of the MD-PhD program. Dr. Wertheim's NIH- and VA-funded laboratory investigates new methods to bioengineer liver and kidney tissue as a future solution to organ shortage in transplantation.
Dr. Wertheim holds a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He obtained a doctoral degree in bioengineering and a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his clinical training in general surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a transplant surgery fellowship at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Dr. Wertheim was awarded the highly coveted Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2019.