August 30, 2016 SPADA Meeting Book
Jay E. Gee, PhD Research Biologist, Bacterial Special Pathogens Branch, DHCPP, NCEZID United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
SPADA BURKHOLDERIA PSEUDOMALLEI WORKING GROUP CHAIR
Jay E. Gee earned his BS in Microbiology at Mississippi State University in 1987 and his PhD in
Biochemistry in 1992 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. He studied
antisense oligonucleotide technology in his first postdoctoral position at Baylor College of Medicine in
Houston, TX. He later studied antiviral therapy strategies using chemically modified oligonucleotides in a
vesicular stomatitis virus model at L’Institut de Génétique Moléculaire de Montpellier (The Institute of
Molecular Genetics of Montpellier) in France in a second postdoctoral position.
He has been with the CDC for almost 14 years. During his research at CDC, he designed real-time PCR
assays to identify pathogenic Leptospira spp. and Burkholderia pseudomallei and has performed
molecular genetic subtyping on a variety of pathogens such as Bacillus spp. (e.g. B. anthracis and B.
cereus ) and Burkholderia spp. (e.g. B. pseudomallei and B. mallei ) in support of epidemiological case
investigations. He has served on the CDC Environmental Microbiology Work Group and serves on the
CDC Next Generation Sequencing Quality Workgroup. He is currently a subject matter expert on
Burkholderia pseudomallei and B. mallei .
Frank F. Roberto, PhD, SM (NRCM) Directorate Fellow, Energy and Environment Idaho National Laboratory
SPADA BRUCELLA WORKING GROUP CHAIR
Frank Roberto received his BS and PhD in biochemistry from the University of California, Davis, and
University of California, Riverside. After a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular plant pathology at UC
Davis, he moved to the US Dept. of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, where he has conducted and
directed R&D programs ranging from biomining with acidophilic bacteria and archaea to rapid detection
of priority bacterial pathogens such as Brucella. For nearly ten years he worked closely with wildlife
biologists studying interspecies transmission of brucellosis to develop field-deployable DNA assays to
address bison and elk management issues in the Greater Yellowstone Area. He is a Specialist
Microbiologist in biological safety (National Registry of Certified Microbiologists) and has held the
Certified Biological Safety Professional (CBSP)certification (American Biological Safety Association).
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