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RTI Fellow Program Members

Distinguished Fellows

Don Bailey, PhD, Distinguished Fellow in early childhood development, appointed November 2005, is internationally known as an expert on young children with disabilities, with a particular emphasis on their families and the role of early intervention. Before coming to RTI, Bailey was W. R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and from 1992 to 2006 director of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. His studies have focused on a genetic disorder called "fragile X syndrome" and the role of newborn screening and early intervention in helping children function with this condition. He has authored or coauthored more than nine books, 30 book chapters, and 138 peer-reviewed articles. Bailey has received the 2004 Rosen Award for Outstanding Research in Fragile X Syndrome from the National Fragile X Foundation, and the 2006 Career Research Scientist Award from the Academy on Mental Retardation. He currently serves as President of the National Fragile X Foundation.
Paul P. Biemer, PhD, Distinguished Fellow in statistics, appointed November 2002, has 29 years of postdoctoral experience in survey methods and statistics. He joined RTI in 1991, serving as director of the survey methods program until 1994 and of the Center for Survey Methods and Research from 1994 to 2000. Dr. Biemer's scientific contributions to survey methodology and statistics include developing methodologies for using computer audio-recorded interviewing, using latent class analysis as a survey error evaluation tool, and applying continuous quality improvement to the coding of industry and occupation question responses. He holds a joint appointment with the Odum Institute for Research in Social Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he is associate director for survey research and director of the certificate program in survey methodology. He has written five books, 35 peer-reviewed publications, 17 book chapters, and numerous papers and presentations.
Derick W. Brinkerhoff, EdD, Distinguised Fellow in international public management, appointed October 2008, has more than 25 years of experience with public management issues in developing and transitioning countries, focusing on policy analysis, program implementation and evaluation, participation, institutional development, democratic governance, and management change. Dr. Brinkerhoff was named an RTI Senior Fellow in 2003. He has received multiple awards and honors for his published research in social science and policy studies and for his contributions to the theory and practice of international development and comparative public administration. Dr. Brinkerhoff has written or edited 8 books, 36 refereed articles, 27 book chapters, and numerous conference papers, and is a sought-after speaker for conferences of major international development organizations. In 2008, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development named him to the experts’ group of the Partnership for Democratic Governance. Dr. Brinkerhoff is North American editor of the UK-based journal, Public Administration and Development. He also holds an associate faculty appointment at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.
F. Ivy Carroll, PhD, Distinguished Fellow in medicinal chemistry, appointed August 2002, joined RTI in 1960. He served as director of the Center for Organic and Medicinal Chemistry (1975-2007) and research vice president of the Chemistry and Life Sciences Group (1996-2001). Dr. Carroll has made major scientific contributions in drug discovery and development and other research areas. Among his most recognized scientific contributions is the development of a diagnostic agent for Parkinson's disease and compounds as potential treatments for cocaine and nicotine addictions and other central nervous system disorders. He has published 407 peer-reviewed publications, 33 book chapters, 37 patents, and 21 patent applications. Dr. Carroll has received numerous awards for his research accomplishments, such as the 2006 Nathan B. Eddy Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the 2006 Research Achievement Award in Drug Design and Discovery from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. In 2007, he was inducted into the American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame.
Kathleen N. Lohr, PhD, Distinguished Fellow in health services research, appointed June 2003, has more than 30 years of experience in health care services and health policy research. She directs the RTI International–University of North Carolina Evidence-based Practice Center and the RTI DEcide Center. Dr. Lohr is also the founding editor-in-chief of RTI Press. She holds the rank of research professor, Health Policy and Administration, UNC School of Public Health. Before coming to RTI in 1996, Dr. Lohr spent nine years at the Institute of Medicine and 12 years at The RAND Corporation, leading work on quality of care, health insurance, and other health care topics. She has written or edited dozens of reports and nearly 120 peer-reviewed articles, recently served as associate editor of Quality of Life Research, and participates on numerous national advisory committees. In 2005, she received the Avedis Donabedian Outcomes Research Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research.
Nancy S. Padian, PhD, Distinguished Fellow in reproductive epidemiology and prevention science, appointed June 2008, is an internationally recognized expert in the heterosexual transmission of HIV and other STIs. She has developed and directed a range of research and intervention projects on STIs, HIV, and contraception in high-risk populations around the world as executive director of the Women's Global Health Imperative at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In 1994, she co-founded the University of Zimbabwe (UZ)-UCSF Collaborative Research Programme in Women's Health in Zimbabwe. Dr. Padian's current research focuses on developing and evaluating female-controlled methods for disease prevention along with alternative strategies for fostering young women's economic independence to reduce their susceptibility to HIV, STIs, and unwanted pregnancies. She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, American Epidemiology Society, and the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research. She frequently consults for UNAIDS, WHO, and the World Bank on programs related to care, treatment, and prevention of HIV.
Kenneth J. Rothman, DrPH, Distinguished Fellow in epidemiology, appointed July 2008, is vice president for Epidemiology Research in RTI Health Solutions. Dr. Rothman has focused his career on the development and teaching of the concepts and methods of epidemiologic research, and has authored or co-authored more than 250 scholarly publications. His research has spanned a wide range of health problems, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurologic disease, birth defects, injuries, environmental exposures, and adverse effects of pharmaceutical agents. He was the founding editor of Epidemiology, assistant editor of the American Journal of Public Health, editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and a member of the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and the international advisory board of The Lancet. He is a past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, an honorary fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, and fellow and member of the board of directors of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology. He has written two widely read epidemiologic textbooks: Modern Epidemiology and Epidemiology, An Introduction.
Rochelle W. Tyl, PhD, DABT, Distinguished Fellow in developmental and reproductive toxicology, appointed October 2008, has more than 40 years of experience in developmental and reproductive biology and toxicology. Dr. Tyl was named an RTI Senior Fellow in 2005. She is the research director of Life Sciences and Toxicology, and has been study director for more than 30 multi-generation studies, more than 20 specialized reproductive and endocrine toxicity studies, and more than 155 developmental toxicity studies. Her research on bisphenol A received international recognition when the World Health Organization and the European Union used her study results to perform formal risk assessments for this chemical. Tyl lectures nationally and internationally by invitation and has participated in multiple federal agency workgroups. She is the author or coauthor of more than 90 peer-reviewed articles, 18 book chapters, more than 85 abstracts, and more than 38 government reports. Tyl was president of the Teratology Society for 2003-2004 and president of the reproductive and developmental toxicology specialty section of the Society of Toxicology for 2007-2008. Since 1983, she has been a diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology and served on the ABT Board of Directors (2003-2007).

Senior Fellows

James R. Chromy, PhD, Senior Fellow in statistics, appointed August 2004, is an expert in sampling theory and application, survey design, and statistical analysis. At RTI, he has led many large-scale surveys; he helped design the sample and data collection methodology for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) first conducted by RTI in 1969 and currently serves on the NAEP Validity Studies Panel. He has experience in all aspects of area probability sampling and household interview surveys and currently serves as operational director for statistics for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Dr. Chromy developed the theory and computational algorithm for selecting minimum replacement probability proportional to size samples, and he developed a computer algorithm for efficient sample allocation that minimizes total survey cost subject to satisfying multiple variance constraints. He is an adjunct professor of statistics at North Carolina State University and an associate editor for the Journal of Official Statistics.
Jerry Cromwell, PhD, Senior Fellow in health economics, appointed April 2002, has developed and refined many significant health care payment methodologies over the past 30 years. He is an expert in health care financing policy; has led more than 75 projects resulting in major revisions in Medicare and Medicaid policies; developed a standard method for analyzing large and complex health care databases; and produced multiple books, chapters, and articles. He is the recipient of a Woodrow Wilson scholarship and a Harvard economic scholarship.
David S. Ensor, PhD, Senior Fellow in aerosol science and nanotechnology, appointed March 2002, has 30 years of experience in aerosol science and air pollution research and is director of the center for aerosol technology and recognized as a leading expert in filtration, indoor air quality, and clean room technology. He founded the American Association for Aerosol Research and the research journal Aerosol Science and Technology. Dr. Ensor consistently contributes to scientific literature and has written 70 peer-reviewed papers and 5 book chapters. He has given more than 160 presentations to major national and international conferences, and holds four U.S. patents.
Diana H. Fishbein, PhD, Senior Fellow in behavioral neuroscience, appointed October 2005, directs the transdisciplinary behavioral science program at RTI. She began her career as professor of criminology at the University of Baltimore and as a scientific investigator at the University of Maryland Medical School and, subsequently, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Department of Justice, and the University of Maryland HIDTA Program. Her studies use interdisciplinary methods and a developmental approach to understanding interactions between neurobiological functions and environmental factors with the goal of informing translational research. Dr. Fishbein consults with federal, state, and local agencies for purposes of expert witnessing in criminal court, training, technical assistance, scientific peer reviews, and development of research protocols. She is primary author of The Dynamics of Drug Abuse and Biobehavioral Perspectives in Criminology, and editor of two volumes of The Science, Treatment and Prevention of Antisocial Behavior.
Norma I. Gavin, PhD, Senior Fellow in maternal and child health, is a senior research economist in the RTI Health, Social, and Economics Research unit. She has more than 30 years of experience in policy analysis and health services research, including project management, research design, claims and other secondary data analysis, economic modeling, and policy impact studies. Dr. Gavin has served as project director and principal investigator for several large contracts, including a contract to support the federal government in their activities related to the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act; evaluations of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), Medicaid managed care, and the early Medicaid expansions for children; and research studies of racial disparities in the health service use and expenditures of Medicaid pregnant women. Dr. Gavin has conducted meta-analyses of evidence on the epidemiology of perinatal depression and the effectiveness of various clinical interventions, as well as pharmacoeconomic and outcomes studies for various federal, state, and private-sector clients.
Thomas J. Hoerger, PhD, Senior Fellow in health economics, appointed September 2005, is director of the RTI-UNC Center of Excellence in Health Promotion Economics. He specializes in health economics, health care reform, and cost-effectiveness analysis. Dr. Hoerger has led numerous research projects for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He has developed models for examining the cost-effectiveness of health promotion interventions and estimated the costs of diabetes, vision loss, and other conditions. He has directed a series of projects to design, implement, and evaluate competitive bidding for Medicare services. The purpose of the CDC-sponsored RTI-UNC Center of Excellence in Health Promotion Economics is to develop, evaluate, and implement health promotion recommendations, programs, and policies; to evaluate their cost-effectiveness; and, consequently, to improve upon efforts to promote health and prevent disease, disability, and injury.
R.K.M. Jayanty, PhD, Senior Fellow in environmental chemistry, appointed December 2005, is a senior program director of environmental and industrial sciences. He has 40 years of experience in the field of environmental analytical chemistry, including significant program management and technical experience with complex multimedia sampling and analysis, chemical speciation, and method development/evaluation of programs for air toxics and fine particles. Dr. Jayanty’s technical experience includes methods development, evaluation, and field validation studies related to the measurement of toxic organics and fine particulates in ambient and source atmospheres. He is currently program manager of the chemical speciation of PM2.5 filter samples collected through nationwide network operations, and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, North Carolina State University. Dr. Jayanty is an internationally recognized scientist and the author of more than 150 technical papers, reports, and presentations.
F. Reed Johnson, PhD, Senior Fellow and principal economist, appointed March 2002, has over 35 years of academic and research experience in health and environmental economics. He has served on the faculty of several universities in the United States, Canada, and Sweden. As a staff member in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's environmental economics research program during the 1980s, Dr. Johnson helped pioneer the development of basic nonmarket valuation techniques. These techniques are now widely used for cost-benefit analysis in health and environmental economics. Dr. Johnson has over 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has coauthored a book on techniques for using existing environmental and health value estimates for policy analysis. His current research involves estimating general time equivalences among health states and patients' willingness to accept side-effect risks in return for therapeutic benefits.
Paul S. Levy, PhD, Senior Fellow in statistical methods in the health sciences, appointed June 2006, has been at RTI since September 2002 following a 31-year career at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where he was a founding faculty member of the School of Public Health and the first director of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Prior to his career at UIC, he was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and served two tours of duty at the Centers for Disease Control, first as an epidemic intelligence officer and later as a mathematical statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics. His more than 200 publications in biostatistics and epidemiology cover such areas as sample survey methodology, design of epidemiological studies, and methodology relevant to analysis of data from observational studies.
Lee Rivers Mobley, PhD, Senior Fellow in health economics, appointed December 2008, specializes in spatial epidemiology and analysis of health care markets and behaviors, using spatial modeling, spatial econometrics, spatial decision support systems, and cartographical modeling. Dr. Mobley was named an RTI Fellow in 2005. She joined RTI in July 2001, and her work at RTI has included market analysis for several Medicare reform initiatives, spatial analysis to explain cardiac risk factors in low income women, and analysis of access to and utilization of preventive care services. Her research reveals why people disenroll from Medicare HMOs or don't get regular cancer screening. Dr. Mobley is currently funded by two NIH grants, and conducts analyses of disparities among populations and across geography, examining socioecological problems where place and space are important. Her research interests include behavioral modeling, measurement of the built environment, remote sensing as a resource for data development, gap or suitability analysis, and building spatial decision support systems.
Edo D. Pellizzari, PhD, Senior Fellow in analytical and environmental health sciences, appointed April 2004, has 35 years of scientific leadership and accomplishment at RTI. He joined RTI in 1971 and served as vice president of Analytical and Chemical Sciences from 1983 to 2003. He is internationally known for major contributions in the environmental health sciences, specifically in chemical and aerosol exposure analysis, and for developing and applying personal exposure methodology to population-based studies on toxic chemicals. In 1989, Dr. Pellizzari helped charter the International Society for Exposure Analysis (ISEA) and established ISEA's Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, for which he served as editor-in-chief for 15 years. Dr. Pellizzari is author or co-author of 191 peer-reviewed papers, 45 book chapters, 261 abstracts for national and international conferences, and over 100 reports. He has received California State University’s Distinguished Alumni and ISEA’s Wesolowski awards for achievements in environmental research.
Charles E. Rodes, PhD, Senior Fellow in aerosol exposure, appointed July 2008, leads the Aerosol Exposure Program at RTI. He has conducted health-based aerosol exposure research for federal and private clients since 1992. Previously, Dr. Rodes conducted aerosol technology and environmental exposure research for 23 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He currently serves as the exposure expert on particulate matter for EPA's Board of Scientific Councilors and is leading grant research to develop asthma aerosol trigger sensors for the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). He also provides aerosol exposure guidance to the National Childrens Study, the U.S. Army (USACHPPM) for active duty soldiers, and for first responders as chair of an expert panel advising the Department of Homeland Security. He is a peer reviewer for five technical journals and the author of over 50 peer journal articles on aerosol exposure technologies.
Joshua M. Wiener, PhD, Senior Fellow and program director of aging, disability and long-term care, appointed June 2003, is the author or editor of 8 books and over 100 articles on health care for older people, people with disabilities, long-term care, Medicaid, health reform, health care rationing, and maternal and child health. He is currently involved in studies of Medicaid home and community-based services, the long-term care workforce, quality assurance for long-term care, and projection and simulation models for long-term care. Dr. Wiener is co-director of the U.S. Administration on Aging-funded Alzheimer's Disease Demonstration Grants to States National Resource Center. Before coming to RTI, Dr. Wiener did policy analysis and research for the Urban Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Health Care Financing Administration, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Congressional Budget Office, the New York State Moreland Act Commission on Nursing Homes and Residential Facilities, and the New York City Department of Health.

Fellows

Jeremy W. Bray, PhD, Fellow in health economics, appointed November 2007, conducts research on the economics of substance abuse and is an expert in the design and conduct of complex, multisite evaluations. Dr. Bray's research focuses on the application of micro-econometric models of time use to the demand for and social consequences of alcohol and illicit drug use. In his work on multisite evaluations, Dr. Bray is applying innovative design and analysis methodologies to the evaluation of behavioral health programs that consist of multiple interventions for multiple populations. Since joining RTI in 1992, Dr. Bray has led or co-led research studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and private foundations. Dr. Bray is an assistant editor for Addiction and has published his findings in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Public Health Reports, Medical Care, and Health Economics.
Philip C. Cooley, Fellow in bioinformatics and high-performance computing, appointed March 2008, is a principal scientist and assistant director of bioinformatics. He has more than 35 years of experience developing computer models for the study of environmental health and disease transmission scenarios. Cooley has been extensively involved in designing and implementing influenza transmission models for the study and management of pandemic flu. His current research includes an assessment of statistical methods for biomarker explorations as part of genome-wide-analysis studies, and he has developed a database of loci with known genetic properties. Cooley has authored or co-authored numerous reports, professional journal articles, and book chapters, and has reviewed for Science, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and the AIDS and Related Research Study Section for the National Institutes of Health. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is on the editorial board of Computers and Human Behavior.

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