The Division of Occupational Health and Safety, Biorisk Management Branch was happy to welcome two new staff members earlier this year. The branch is responsible for ensuring regulatory compliance as it pertains to select agents and biological research conducted at the NIH. Expertise is required in the areas of infectious substance shipping, inventory management and high containment laboratory operations. The new staff will be joining a highly skilled and technically competent team of biosafety professionals.
Dr. Carolyn Buckwalter – Building 33 Safety Manager, Select Agent Responsible Official
Carolyn joins us from within DOHS where she spent the last year serving as a Safety Manager for NCI, NICHD, and NCATS. Prior to that, she was at the University of Toronto where she was the CL3 (BSL3) Facility Manager and Research Operations Officer. She holds a PhD in Biomedical Science (Microbial Pathogenesis) from Ohio State University. Her research interests were bacterial metabolism, vaccines and rodent models of asymptomatic carriage. She is a bacteriologist at heart and will always have a fondness for her bugs - pneumococcus and meningococcus. Carolyn spent the past 8 years living in Canada and the UK before moving to Maryland last year. She has two young children who are experiencing living in the US for the first time. In her spare time, she also enjoys hiking and knitting.
Dr. Kenneth Shenge – Building 33 Back-Up, Alternate Responsible Official
Ken earned his Bachelor of Agriculture degree from Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria and his doctorate in Molecular Plant Pathology from the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania on a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship. His doctorate research focused on resistance mechanisms in tomato to bacterial spot and bacterial speck, pathogen-host interactions in the pathosystems, and epidemiology of the tomato diseases in Tanzania. Ken's interest in understanding the intersection of food safety, agriculture, and public health led to a Master of Public Health degree at the University of Arizona with a focus on Applied Epidemiology. He is an Alumnus of the National Biosafety and Biocontainment Training Program and was Deputy Biosecurity Manager at USAMRIID at Ft. Deitrick in Frederick, MD prior to coming back to the NIH. Ken is married with four kids. He loves to cook, and to read in his spare time.
