SC 3-4: Uncertainty in Emergency Response Public Health Decisions

is a scientist in the Nonproliferation and National Security Department at the U. S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York. With more than 30 y of experience in Health Physics, his current research interests are in nonproliferation, counterterrorism, and planning for response to the consequences of radiological and nuclear terrorism. Since 1981, he has been part of the DOE Radiological Assistance Program as a Team Captain/Team Scientist and has been involved in developing radiological emergency response plans and procedures, as well as participating in a wide range of radiological and nuclear exercises and field deployments. During the Fukushima crisis, he was deployed in Japan as an Assessment Scientist with the DOE response team that was measuring the environmental consequences of the radioactive material released from the damaged nuclear power plants. Working with the first responder community in the New York metropolitan area, Dr. Musolino was involved with the development of guidance for response to the aftermath of a radiological dispersal device, and served on the scientific committee that developed NCRP Report No. 165, Responding to a Radiological or Nuclear Terrorism Incident: A Guide for Decision Makers. Earlier in his career at BNL, he was a member of the Marshall Islands Radiological Safety Program and participated in numerous field missions to monitor the populations living on islands affected by nuclear testing.

Dr. Musolino is a Fellow of the Health Physics Society, Distinguished Alumnus of Buffalo State College, and a member of the editorial board of the journal Health Physics. He earned a BS in engineering technology from Buffalo State College, an MS in nuclear engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York University, and a PhD in health physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is certified by the American Board of Health Physics.

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is a Senior Health Physicist in the Radiation Studies Section in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Salame-Alfie spent 22 y with the New York State Department of Health in various capacities including Director of the Division of Environmental Health Investigation, Director of Preparedness for the Center for Environmental Health, and Director of the Bureau of Environmental Radiation Protection.

Dr. Salame-Alfie is a member of NCRP, and co-chaired Scientific Committees (SC) 3-1 and 3-2 that prepared NCRP Report No. 179 and Commentary No. 28 addressing dosimetry guidance for radiation emergency workers; and SC 3-3 that prepared Statement No. 15 on respiratory protection guidance for workers and volunteers. She is a Lifetime member of the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors where she served as Chair and member of the Board of Directors and chaired several committees and received the 2014 Gerald S. Parker Award. She is a Fellow member of the Health Physics Society and currently serves on the Board of Directors. She has extensive experience in many areas of radiation protection including radiological emergency preparedness and response, environmental radiation and radon and has published and co-authored many publications.

Dr. Salame-Alfie obtained her MS and PhD in Nuclear Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

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supports the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Ukraine Task Force. Previously he was the DOE Attaché at the U.S. Embassies in Pakistan and Israel before that. From 2009 through 2020 he managed DOE radiological response programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. In that role, Dr. Blumenthal led the initial DOE response team to Japan following the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident in March 2011. He has also participated in many international technical exchanges regarding emergency preparedness and nonproliferation. In 2009, he transferred from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office where he was the Chief Test Scientist responsible for evaluating the performance of radiation detectors for first responders. Before that he was a Senior Scientist at DOE’s Remote Sensing Laboratory where he supported DOE emergency response teams. Dr. Blumenthal’s background is in nuclear physics. He is also a Certified Health Physicist, a Fellow of the Health Physics Society, and an Associate Editor of the Health Physics Journal.

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is a health physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since starting in 2016, her work has focused primarily on advancing the radiological dose assessment capability for the Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center and serving as a responder for the U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration Nuclear Emergency Support Team. Ms. Cochran holds a BS in Radiological Health Engineering and MS in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University. She received her American Board of Health Physics certification in 2021.

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Director of the Center for Risk Communication, is one of the world’s leading experts and practitioners on risk, high stress, and crisis communications. He is the author of more than 150 articles in scientific journals and the author/editor of more than 20 books. Dr. Covello is a consultant, writer, speaker and teacher. He is a frequent keynote speaker and has conducted communication skills training for thousands.

Dr. Covello has served as a risk, high concern, and crisis communications adviser to numerous public and private sectors organizations. For example, he has worked with over 400 of the 500 Fortune 500 companies and with over 200 government agencies, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency, and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. His work has been applied nationally and globally to a wide range of topics, including radiological incidents, disease outbreaks, industrial accidents, water contamination, air pollution, food safety, climate change, physician-patient communications, and organizational change. Most recently, he has worked closely with the 50 U.S. State Health Directors on their responses to questions from the media and the public on COVID-19.

Dr. Covello has received many awards for his work and has held numerous positions, including Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and Environmental Sciences at the Columbia University School of Public Health, a program manager at the National Science Foundation, a study director at the National Academy of Sciences, President of the Society for Risk Analysis, and Vice-Chairperson of the Radiation Education, Risk Communication and Education Committee of NCRP. Dr. Covello obtained his BA with honors and MA from Cambridge University in England and his doctorate from Columbia University.

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is a physical scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Air Resources Laboratory where she has worked on the development of the HYSPLIT (Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model) atmospheric transport and dispersion model since 2014. She has expertise in modeling radiological releases and in quantifying uncertainty in dispersion forecasts, with a focus on developing and applying ensemble modeling techniques. Her research also includes modeling volcanic emissions, wildfire smoke, dust, and chemical releases. She co-chairs the Interagency Council on Advancing Meteorological Services working group on atmospheric transport and dispersion modeling and serves as an advisor to the U.S. member of the Meteorological Panel of the International Civil Aviation Organization. In that role, she provides expertise on volcanic ash dispersion modeling, particularly in the development of quantitative and probabilistic forecasting for aviation. Her work on radiological applications includes support for the Washington Regional Specialized Meteorological Center and participation in Atmospheric Transport Model challenges organized by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. Dr. Crawford holds a BS in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a PhD in Physics from Cornell University.

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has over three decades’ experience in high-concern, low-trust public communications. He advises the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, lectures at Harvard University, and advises/educates both individuals and organizations on how to implement best practices in risk and crisis communication.

His diverse experience covers disease outbreaks, nuclear emergencies, natural disasters, outbreak investigations, product safety concerns, reorganizations and downsizing, budget cuts, rogue employee mitigations, health hazard evaluations, and strategic communications. As the Senior Vice President for Global Medical at Moderna, Dr. Hyer helped develop, communicate, and manage the global rollout of the Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. In 2017, he was pivotal in engaging the scientific, medical and policy communities to achieve Food and Drug Administration approval of a new adult hepatitis B vaccine (HEPLISAV-B®), the first vaccine using a truly novel adjuvant.

Board-certified in general preventive medicine and public health, Dr. Hyer earned his MD from Duke and trained at Walter Reed Hospital and Harvard. He received the PhD from the University of Oxford researching the genetics of juvenile diabetes. His studies won the National Institutes of Health "Outstanding Research Award for Clinical Trainees" and are widely cited.

At Oxford University, Dr. Hyer founded the biotechnology company, Alpha-Plus DNA. He also served as a U.S. Congressional Fellow for Senator Pete V. Domenici (R. -NM). Dr. Hyer helped introduce legislation to safeguard genetic privacy that eventually became the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (GINA) of 2008.

Dr. Hyer graduated with Distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy. Rising to the rank of Commander, his naval service included four major military combat operations in Europe and southwest Asia as well as three major complex humanitarian emergencies with Kosovo relief, Mozambique flood relief, and the Indian Ocean tsunami. Dr. Hyer also served as the Winter-Over Medical Officer at the McMurdo and South Pole Stations, Antarctica as the sole physician.

At the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Dr. Hyer served as a Medical Officer and Military Liaison. Among other duties, he helped facilitated the WHO response to various crisis such as anthrax, Ebola, the 2003 SARS outbreak, tsunamis, earthquakes, and pandemic influenza.

Dr. Hyer’s perspectives and contributions span his residing in eight and travelling to 100 plus countries in diverse roles across the public and private sectors.

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is an atmospheric scientist and Chief Scientist for Consequence Management in the Nuclear Emergency Support Team Program in the Global Security Principal Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He has four decades experience in atmospheric dispersion modeling and incident response. He joined LLNL in 1984 to develop and apply atmospheric dispersion models in the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC), with an emphasis on nuclear and radiological releases. Dr. Nasstrom has led efforts in atmospheric dispersion and fallout model development, in evaluation and improvement of models using field data, and in the development of an operational emergency response system for atmospheric release modeling and radioactive dose assessment. He helped produce analyses of impacts of radioactivity released for several historic events, including the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident in 1986, and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in Japan in 2011, for which he helped lead NARAC efforts in support of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Dr. Nasstrom received BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Atmospheric Science from the University of California, Davis. He received a Certificate for Excellence for the “Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster Response” from the U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in 2012, and a NNSA Administrator’s Distinguished Service Gold Award in 2019.

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retired as Deputy Head of the Institute for Thermal Energy Technology and Security (ITES) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (2018 - 2022) and Head of the Accident Management Group, ITES/KIT (2006 - 2022). He earned his scientific degree in meteorology in 1986 from the Technical University of Karsruhe, Meteorological Institute. His most recent research topics include nuclear and radiological emergency management, decision support for large crisis situations, forensic disaster analysis, and critical infrastructures.

Dr. Raskob is an elected member of the Subcommittee on Emergency Management of the German Radiation Protection Commission (since 2018), elected member of the Emergency Advisory Board of the German Radiation Protection Commission (since 2019), and was a member of the Research and Development Committee of the European National Emergency Response Information System Platform on Emergency Management, an advisor of the Hong Kong Observatory (2013 - 2023), and an advisor of the Institute of Environmental Radioactivity of the Fukushima University (2014 - 2024).

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is an expert in radiation risk communication. As a member of NCRP’s Program Area Committee on Radiation Education, Risk Communication and Outreach, Ms. Wieder helped write NCRP Report No. 179, Guidance for Emergency Response Dosimetry, and plan the outreach for high profile publications such as NCRP Report No. 180 on Management of Exposure to Ionizing Radiation: Radiation Protection Guidance for the United States (2018), and Commentary No. 27 on the Implications of Recent Epidemiologic Studies for the Linear-Nonthreshold Model and Radiation Protection. Also working through NCRP, Ms. Wieder and Brooke Buddemeier became TED educators on how to survive nuclear fallout.

Jessica Wieder serves as the Director of Incident Communications Planning in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Office of External Affairs. Ms. Wieder previously served as FEMA’s Deputy Director of Communications and Acting Deputy Director of Public Affairs and Planning. Prior to joining FEMA, Ms. Wieder was the Director of the Center for Radiation Information and Outreach at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) where she served at EPA’s senior radiation public information officer during the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, facilitated international panels on emergency response public communication, and led the public communications contingency planning teams for the 2011 and 2020 Mars launches. With two decades of public service experience, Ms. Wieder remains dedicated to her passion for translating complex information into accessible content, empowering individuals to make informed decisions about their health and safety.

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