Highlight on Faculty

Program Chair

Richard McCarty is the Chair. He is the William D. Gill Professor of Biology and is Dean Emeritus of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Ever since he was an undergraduate student at Hopkins, Dr. McCarty has been fascinated by solar energy conversion by green plants, otherwise known as photosynthesis. His research focuses on the chloroplast enzyme that makes ATP. The activity of this enzyme has the unusual property of being switched on during the day and off at night.

Dr. McCarty received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Johns Hopkins. For nearly twenty-five years he was on the faculty of the Section of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology, Cornell University. He was Chair of the Section for five years and was Director of Cornell’s Biotechnology Program for three years. In 1990 he returned to Hopkins as Chair of the Department of Biology and has served as the Interim Dean of the Krieger School and the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School. He served as Chair of this Program from 1998 to 1999 and is happy to be back.

Associate Program Chairs

Patrick Cummings is the Senior Associate Program Chair for the Master of Science in Biotechnology Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs. Dr. Cummings received his doctoral degree in Infectious Disease and Microbiology from the University Pittsburgh. He completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in molecular biology and cell biology at the Wistar Institute & the University of Pennsylvania. Following completion of his training and before joining Johns Hopkins University, Patrick held a faculty position at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Dr. Cummings is the Past President of the Maryland Branch of the American Society for Microbiology. Dr. Cummings teaches Principles of Immunology, Recombinant DNA Laboratory, Recombinant Protein Expression, Production and Analysis, and Cell Culture Techniques.
Lynn Johnson Langer is the Senior Associate Program Chair for the Master of Science in Bioscience Regulatory Affairs, the MS in Biotechnology/MBA, the MS in Biotechnology Enterprise and Regulatory Affairs concentration and the Certificate in Biotechnology Enterprise. Dr. Langer is President-Elect of Women In Bio and will become president in 2010. She brings the merger of science and business to the program. She attended Tulane University and the University of Maryland for her undergraduate degree in microbiology. She later received her MBA from Johns Hopkins University, and received the Stegman Award for academic excellence in Administrative Science. She received her Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University. While a student at Johns Hopkins she co-founded the Hopkins Professional Women's Network. Dr. Langer has headed the sales and marketing department of several biotechnology companies and worked as a consultant in the bioscience industry. She founded BioPlan Associates, a management and marketing consulting firm. She has worked extensively with leading biomedical and high technology companies. Dr. Langer has been involved in "think-tanks" with organizations such as NASA, developing potential biotechnology products to be tested in space and others in the biomedical field. She has published over fifty articles and two book chapters mainly in business areas of biotechnology and has taught a variety of graduate courses in biotechnology and business. Dr. Langer teaches Managing and Leading Biotechnology Professionals, Bioscience Communication, Emerging Issues in Biotechnology, Marketing Aspects of Biotechnology, Proseminar in Biotechnology.add Leading Change in Biotechnology.
Kristina Obom is Associate Program Chair for the Master of Science in Bioinformatics and for the Master of Science in Biotechnology program, Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs. She is an alumna of Hopkins, receiving her undergraduate degree from the School of Arts and Sciences in Public Health. Her training in public health continued at Yale University where she received a Masters in Public Health in Infectious Disease Epidemiology. Dr. Obom received her PhD from the City University of New York at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in Biomedical Science, where she studied pox viruses. She has an interest in bioinformatics and taught bioinformatics and introductory biology in the Biology Department of the Catholic University of America. Dr. Obom currently teaches Virology, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Introduction to Bioinformatics, Biodefense Lab Methods and Cell Culture Techniques. She was a 2006 recipient of the Martin Luther King Award for Community Service.

Faculty Members

Fredric Abramson has been working for forty years in business, computer software development, management, bioscience, health care, and education. Abramson developed and implemented the first decision support computer system for health care in the early 1970s to control and reduce hospital-acquired infections. He founded a health and fitness center, the Association for Medical Emergency Informatics, Inc., United Software Associates, Inc. to bring innovative computer software to the American market from Europe, and the Fit America Research Center, to conduct research on weight loss.
Thomas Colonna, PhD, JD has a broad educational background with a BS (Microbiology) from the University of Sciences in Philadelphia (formerly the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science), a PhD (Molecular Biology) from the Johns Hopkins University, and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has published extensively in several areas and has extensive regulatory affairs experience. In addition to his consulting practice, Dr. Colonna is a lecturer in the Biotechnology and Bioscience Regulatory Affairs programs at the Johns Hopkins University.
Alison Demarest is a principal at Meridian BioGroup LLC, a compliance and validation services provider to the Maryland biopharm community. Ms. Demarest co-founded Meridian in March 2007, bringing GMP, GLP, project management, and client service expertise. She has more than 20 years of experience in biotechnology and FDA-regulated industries, in both consulting and operating companies. Ms. Demarest has been director of Quality and Regulatory Affairs at BioReliance Invitrogen Bioservices, regulatory compliance director for AMEC Biopharmaceuticals (formerly Phoenix Imperative), and QA director for Bio Science Contract Production Corp. (now Lonza). She has managed compliance services on wide range of projects and conducted more than 50 audits domestically and overseas. Since 2002, she has taught at Johns Hopkins in the Biotech and Regulatory Affairs programs and she has lectured on compliance topics at ASME and ISPE conferences, NCARSQA and SIM meetings, Hood College, the University of Maryland, and Montgomery College. Ms. Demarest holds masters degrees in science and in business administration.
Evan DeRenzo is a bioethicist with the Center for Ethics at the Washington Hospital Center, MedStar Health, Washington, D.C. Dr. DeRenzo received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in Human Development/Gerontology and was the first Senior Staff Fellow in bioethics at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is adjunct faculty in the AAP in Biotechnology at The Johns Hopkins University and serves/has served on numerous Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), Data Safety and Monitoring Boards, and hospital ethics committees.
Thomas Koval received a B.S. in Biology from The Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology/Radiation Biology from The Ohio State University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Physiology and Biophysics/ Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Koval has held faculty positions at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, PA, the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC, and Mayo Medical School/Mayo Graduate School in Rochester, MN. He has published extensively in cell and molecular biology, especially in the areas of cellular radiation damage/repair, stress-inducible cellular processes, and insect cell culture. Dr. Koval began teaching in the AAP Biotechnology Program in 2002 and currently teaches Advanced Cell Biology I and Radiation Biology and oversees the Independent Research Project course.
David Landsman is the Chief of the Computational Biology Branch for the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and has since become an international leader in the field now known as bioinformatics: the management, analysis, and advance of extensive biological and genetics information with computer databasing and modeling technologies.
Ning Li , M.D., PH.D, is currently a Team Leader, Branch of Cardiovascular and ophthalmology, Office of Surveillance and Biostatistics, US Food and Drug Administration. Prior to his current assignment, Dr Li was a senior reviewer and acting Team Leader in the Center for Drug Evaluation’s Division of Biometrics I/Division of Oncology Drug Products and Division of Scientific Investigation. Dr Li is a quantitative scientist with over 10 years of regulatory experiences in medical product development and expertise in regulatory review of clinical trial design, data analysis, overall risk/benefit assessment and postmarketing safety surveillance. He reviewed/peer reviewed over 50 NDA/BLA/PMAs and 400+ IND/IDEs during his tenure at the FDA. He had experience in drafting/implementing FDA guidance/process for variety of products and has unique international regulatory experiences in educating/training of regulatory scientists in the Asian Pacific region. Dr Li is a graduate of Shanghai Medical College (M.D., 1984), University of Iowa (M.S., Ph.D in Preventive Medicine, 1992, 1994), He received Merck MD/PhD Fellowship in 1992 and before he joined the FDA, he worked at the University of Iowa, Dept of Internal Medicine’s Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Westat Health Study Sector on anti-sepsis and anti-AIDS clinical trials during 1992-1997. A faculty member in Shanghai Medical University from 1984-1987.
Lisa Selbie is the Assistant Project Coordinator of the Australian Biotechnology Initiative for the Master of Science in Biotechnology, Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Program. Dr. Selbie has worked for many years in medical research after receiving her PhD in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Karen Wells received her B.S. in Biochemistry in 1989 from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. After working for a short time for Union Carbide Corporation (now part of Dow Chemical), and then instructing Biology and Chemistry classes at Illinois Central College, she entered a graduate school program in the Biological Sciences Division at Emory University in 1991. She earned her Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from Emory University in 1997, and then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Physiology at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute in 2000. Since 1999, Karen has taught and continues to teach numerous courses for the Advanced Academic Program in Biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University. Through 2003, while still living in Baltimore, Karen taught a mixture of on-site and online courses, including Biochemistry, Advanced Cell Biology I, Advanced Cell Biology II, and Neurobiology. Since relocating to Athens, Georgia in the Summer of 2003, Karen continues to teach exclusively online, with the same mixture of courses as well as a relatively new "Current Topics in Molecular & Cellular Biology" course.