CARD Scientific Advisory Group
The Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) is a dedicated committee of individuals who volunteer their expertise and services. Its primary objective is to provide guidance and recommendations to the Research Staff and Board of Directors regarding programming and research goals aligned with the mission of the Center for Asbestos Related Disease (CARD). The SAG also facilitates communication and collaboration between CARD and its academic and clinical partners. Meetings are held at least twice a year and as necessary, utilizing various formats such as face-to-face sessions, phone or video conferences, and electronic communication. Attendance at a majority of SAG meetings is mandatory, and participation in Biennial Conferences is highly encouraged.
If you are an expert interested in joining CARD’s Scientific Advisory Group, please contact the Chairperson, Jean Pfau.
Curtis Noonan
Curtis Noonan, Professor of Epidemiology, received his Ph.D. in Environmental Health with a specialization in Epidemiology from Colorado State University in 2000. He is also a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (B.A., 1989) and the George Washington University (M.A., 1995). After receiving his Ph.D., Curtis worked as an epidemiologist at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in Atlanta. In 2004, he was hired in the College of Health Professions and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Montana. He has been the Principal Investigator or co-Principal Investigator on several studies, including three NIH R01s, and was a member of the LERP team. He has worked extensively with the CARD on several projects, including the screening program and Dr. Jean Pfau’s research regarding autoimmune and pleural outcomes of LA exposure. He currently serves as Director for the NIH-funded Center for Population Health Research at the University of Montana.
Jean Pfau
Jean Pfau received her Ph.D. in Microbiology/Biochemistry in 1998, but her post-doctoral training fostered her true passion for inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, which became her research focus. In 2001, Dr. Pfau began her collaboration with the CARD, focused on autoimmune disease associated with LA exposure. Her lab developed a mouse exposure model to explore mechanisms of autoimmunity by silica and asbestos in order to validate asbestos as a causative agent for systemic autoimmune diseases, and her work with both mice and with the CARD has been consistently funded by the CDC and the NIH. Over the years, her research laboratory was at University of Montana, in the Center for Environmental Health sciences; at Idaho State University, and at Montana State University. She has published over 60 peer reviewed papers and 6 book chapters, and has collaborated with researchers across the U.S. as well as in Western Australia, Canada, and South Africa. Currently at Montana State University in Bozeman, Dr. Pfau serves as a consultant with the CARD regarding autoimmune disease screening, and is a Professor of Physiology for the WIMU Regional Program in Veterinary Medicine.
Albert Miller
Albert Miller, M.D is a pulmonologist Professor of Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York who has been intensely involved with occupational lung diseases since his first work with Irving Selikoff in 1959. He has held joint appointments in Pulmonary Medicine (in the Department of Medicine) and in Occupational Medicine, and has published 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals on asbestos diseases and epidemiology, use and interpretation of pulmonary function tests and reference standards for respiratory signs, symptoms and tests. He has been a NIOSH-certified B reader for pneumoconiosis for 40 years and was a contributor to the latest American Thoracic Society Statement on Asbestos Disease. He has been involved with Libby amphibole epidemiology and clinical studies from the onset, in the last 10 years coauthoring 10 papers with Drs. Black, Loewen, Noonan and others.
Gregory Loewen
Gregory Loewen, D.O. FCCP. is a pulmonologist you all know, due to his work at the CARD from 2015 -2017. Currently, he is at Arnot Ogden Medical Center in Elmira, NY where he is a faculty member at LECOM. He has authored over 70 scientific publications, and has over 30 years of experience caring for patients. He was the former director of Pulmonary Services at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, was director of Pulmonary Oncology for Providence Regional Cancer Center in Spokane, and served as a faculty member at Washington State University, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, University at Buffalo, and at Pacific Northwest University. His work has helped validate the Libby Amphibole diseases, and he has continued to serve as a consultant and friend to the CARD.
Jacqueline Moline
Jacqueline Moline, MD, is the current Senior Vice President and Chair of the Department of Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Prevention at Northwell Health, New York. r. Moline received her medical degree from the University of Chicago-Pritzker School of Medicine and a Master of Science degree in community medicine from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She completed a residency in internal medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital, and an occupational and environmental medicine residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Before joining Northwell, Dr. Moline was vice chair and associate professor in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, as well as associate professor of internal medicine. She served as the director of Mount Sinai’s Clinical Center of Excellence within the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program, which has diagnosed and treated thousands of World Trade Center responders in the New York metropolitan area and across the United States. She joined the CARD’s efforts through our meeting in New York in 2021, volunteering her time as an advisor for the CARD.
Emanuela Taioli
Emanuela Taioli received her M.D. from University of Milan in 1981. She then attended Columbia University where she received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Epidemiology. Dr. Taioli served as the Chief of Epidemiology for the Northwell Health System at Hofstra School of Medicine until 2015, where she established herself as a pioneer in pooling large datasets, became well-recognized as an expert in cancer survivorship, and did extensive work on health disparities, access to care, and chronic disease prevention. In 2015, she joined Mount Sinai as Professor Population Health and Science and of Thoracic Surgery. She serves as the Director of the Institute for Translational Epidemiology, and as Director of the Center for the Study of Thoracic Diseases Outcomes. She is also Associate Director for Population Science and a Co-Leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the Tisch Cancer Institute. Dr. Taioli participated in the 2021 meeting in New York, and volunteered her expertise in helping the CARD move forward.
Claudia Henschke
Claudia Henschke, M.D., Ph.D. is a pioneer and leading expert in diagnostic radiology, with more than 25 years of clinical and research experience with low-dose CT screening. She received her PhD at the University of Georgia, and her MD at Howard University. Prior to joining the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2010, she was a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School and the Weill Cornell Medical College. She has authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications, and has trained over 80 physician researchers. She currently serves as a Radiologist and Professor of Radiology at the Icahn School of Medicine, and is Director of the international Early Lung Cancer Action Project (ELCAP). She was a research member of the LERP, and continues to collaborate with the CARD regarding lung cancer screening and is assisting in the development of the CARD data registry.
Jaime Szeinuk
Jacqueline Moline, MD, is the current Senior Vice President and Chair of the Department of Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Prevention at Northwell Health, New York. r. Moline received her medical degree from the University of Chicago-Pritzker School of Medicine and a Master of Science degree in community medicine from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She completed a residency in internal medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital, and an occupational and environmental medicine residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Before joining Northwell, Dr. Moline was vice chair and associate professor in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, as well as associate professor of internal medicine. She served as the director of Mount Sinai’s Clinical Center of Excellence within the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program, which has diagnosed and treated thousands of World Trade Center responders in the New York metropolitan area and across the United States. She joined the CARD’s efforts through our meeting in New York in 2021, volunteering her time as an advisor for the CARD.
David F. Yankelevitz, MD
David Yankelevitz is a world-recognized expert on Fine Needle Aspirations (FNAs) of lung nodules; and he has developed one of the largest FNA practices in the United States, performing over 10,000 FNA procedures, to date.
He is the Co-Principal Investigator of the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP) – a lung cancer screening study which, to date, has enrolled over 85,000 people around the world. He is also the Co-Principal Investigator of the Initiative for Early Lung Cancer Research on Treatment (IELCART) which started in 2016.
As a researcher, Dr. Yankelevitz’s main clinical and academic interest is in the evaluation of treatments for early-diagnosed lung cancer, and he has numerous collaborations with thoracic surgeons, pulmonologists, pathologists and molecular biologists on related projects. He led the development of software for volumetric analysis of pulmonary nodules — now a widely accepted tool supporting early diagnosis. In addition, he has been PI on three NCI grants related to this work and has performed the functions of a core lab for several clinical trials in early lung cancer, including development of protocols for saving small amounts of tissue from lung biopsies used for molecular testing, integrating tumor volume assessments, and correlating with molecular markers. Dr. Yankelevitz is working with industry on assessing liquid biopsies to be integrated into diagnostic and treatment approaches. He is a member of the American College of Radiology Committee on screening recommendations (LungRADS).
In addition to his medical and research work, Dr. Yankelevitz has co-authored over 400 articles, abstracts and book chapters; and he has trained 80 research fellows in thoracic imaging. He has obtained 14 patents.
Dr. Yankelevitz joined the faculty of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2010 as a radiologist and Professor of Radiology. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Yankelevitz was Professor of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Anthony Reeves
Anthony Reeves is a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is the director of the Vision and Image Analysis Lab at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. in Electronics at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England in 1973. He has been on the faculty of Cornell University since 1982; previously, from 1976 to 1982, he was an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering at Purdue University. He has held visiting faculty positions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; McGill University, Montreal, P.Q., Canada; and Pavia University, Italy. From 1987 to 1988 he was a member of the faculty of the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since 2000 he has also holds faculty appointments in the Department of Radiology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and more recently in the Department of Radiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. His current research focus is computer methods for analyzing digital images for accurate image measurements, with a primary focus on biomedical applications. In collaboration with radiologists at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, a main research objective is the automatic detection and diagnosis of lung cancer from Computer Tomography (CT) scans and the computer aided diagnosis of diseases within the chest. He became very interested in LA disease at our meeting in Libby in 2019, and is currently collaborating with CARD to validate the use of his modeling in early diagnosis and staging of pleural disease.