Symposium sponsored by:

Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies

Department of Health and Human Services

Infectious Diseases Society of America

Professional Biography
Dr. Osterholm has been the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ican, INC. since March, 1999. ican, INC. is a newly founded company whose mission is to become the dominant provider of products and services to address the information needs of health care and public health professionals challenged with the tracking, prevention, and treatment of infections in all institutional and occupational settings throughout the world.

Prior to his position at ican, INC., Dr. Osterholm served for 24 years in various roles at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), the past 15 years as State Epidemiologist and Chief, Acute Disease Epidemiology Section. He remains a consultant to the Minnesota Department of Health. He is also Adjunct Professor, Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. While at the MDH, Osterholm and his team were leaders in the area of infectious disease epidemiology. He has led numerous investigations of outbreaks of international importance, including foodborne diseases, the association of tampons and toxic shock syndrome, the transmission of hepatitis B in health care settings and human immunodeficiency virus infection in health care workers. In addition, they have conducted numerous studies regarding infectious diseases in child day care, vaccine-preventable diseases, particularly Haemophilus influenzae, type b and hepatitis B virus vaccines, Lyme disease, and other emerging infections. Osterholm's team was one of the first to call attention to the changing epidemiology of foodborne disease. Recently, Dr. Osterholm has been one of the national leaders detailing the growing concern regarding the use of biological agents as weapons of mass destruction in civilian populations. Dr. Osterholm provides a comprehensive and pointed review of America's current state of preparedness for a bioterrorism attack in his recently released book, Living Terror, published by Delacourt Press.

Osterholm is the author of more than 185 papers and 18 book chapters regarding infectious disease epidemiology. He is a frequent invited guest lecturer around the world on numerous areas of infectious disease epidemiology. He serves on the editorial boards of five journals including The Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, and Microbial Drug Resistance: Mechanisms, Epidemiology and Disease, and is a reviewer for 24 additional journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Science. He is past president of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and served on the National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Board of Scientific counselors from 1992 to 1997. He served on the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine (IOM), Forum on Emerging Infections and the Committee on Food Safety, Production to Consumption, and as a reviewer for the IOM report on chemical and biological terrorism. As a member of the American Society for Microbiology, he chairs the Committee on Public Health and serves on the Public and Scientific Affairs Board, the Task Force on Biological Weapons and the Task Force on Antibiotic Resistance. He is a frequent consultant to the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Defense and the CDC. He is a Fellow in the American College of Epidemiology, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Osterholm has received numerous honors for his work, including the "Pump Handle Award," CSTE; the Charles C. Shepard Science Award, CDC; the Harvey W. Wiley Medal, FDA: the "Squibb Award," Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Wade Hampton Frost Leadership, American Public Health Association. Osterholm has been the recipient of five major research awards from the NIH and CDC.