U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Hidden Signals Challenge

Dr. Ranu Dhillon works on building community-based primary health systems in low-income countries and settings and designing strategies for controlling epidemics. Based in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he served as a Special Advisor to the President and National Ebola Coordinator in Guinea during the West African Ebola Epidemic and helped manage the national Ebola response. In previous roles, he previously served as a Senior Health Advisor with the Earth Institute at Columbia University, an Associate Member of Ariadne Labs, and taught at Harvard Medical School and Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Dr. Dhillon sat on the International Advisory Panel to the National Rural Health Mission in India, the Ministerial Working Group for Ministers of Health from Nigeria, India, China, Ethiopia, and Kenya, Partners in Health’s Community Health Worker Taskforce, and the Board of Directors for Spark MicroGrants. He has contributed to the Harvard Global Health Delivery Project and served on expert panels with the WHO and UNICEF. Dr. Dhillon earned his BS and MD from the combined six-year accelerated program at Penn State University and Jefferson Medical College and is a graduate of the Hiatt Residency for Global Health Equity and Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Tom McGinn is a Senior Health Advisor with the Office of Health Affairs (OHA), National Biosurveillance Integration Center, and the Program Manager for NCB-Prepared, which is developing a comprehensive state-wide system that analyzes public health trends and reduces homeland security threats. Previously, Dr. McGinn was the Chief Veterinarian for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Director of the Food, Agriculture and Veterinary Defense Division. Dr. McGinn is nationally recognized for founding the National State Animal Response Team (SART), and as the Deputy Commander for the Federal Veterinary Medicine Assistance Team (VMAT), he served at ground zero of the World Trade Center site after the September 11, 2001. As the Director of Emergency Programs and Assistant State Veterinarian to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Dr. McGinn also advised on the reduction of vulnerabilities due to natural or man-made disasters, disease outbreak and/or terrorist attacks. Dr. McGinn received his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degrees from North Carolina State University.

Dr. Eric Moore is an expert in chemical and biological defense and medical countermeasures, and serves as the Acting Director at the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC), the Nation’s premier chemical and biological defense research and development establishment. He also helps coordinate Federal efforts to enhance chemical threat preparedness from a medical counter-measure perspective by serving as the U.S. Department of Defense Science and Technology representative to the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise Chemical Integrated Program Team, with the National Institutes of Health, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Agriculture, and the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense. Prior to ECBC, Dr. Moore served in various roles at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), where he led basic and applied science efforts to counter current and future chemical and biological threats, and build a strong foundation for the next generation of chemical and biological defense capabilities. Prior to his service at DTRA, Dr. Moore served as the Senior Science & Strategic Advisor for Northrop Grumman, where he served multiple roles in support of the Chemical Biological Defense Program and DTRA.

Gary Schenkel has deep experience overseeing local, state and federal partners to strategically plan and coordinate responses to emergency situations, and planning for issues related to Homeland Security. Mr. Schenkel is the former Executive Director of the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications, with a 46-year career of distinguished public service that includes: serving at the most senior level in the Department of Defense, leading the nation’s second largest police force in anti- terrorism efforts following the attacks of September 11, 2001, serving as the Director of the Federal Protective Service, and implementing effective responses to the ever-changing terror threat to aviation at Transportation Security Administration. A 29-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Mr. Schenkel retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2000.

Dr. Ida Sim is a primary care physician, informatics researcher, and entrepreneur. She is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she co-directs Biomedical Informatics at UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. Her research focuses on computational methods for data sharing and decision making for clinical research and mobile health. She is a co-founder of Open mHealth, a non-profit organization that is building open standards and open source tools for integrating mobile health data, and co-founder of Vivli, a non-profit organization that is building a global neutral platform for sharing participant-level clinical trials data. Dr. Sim has served on multiple advisory committees on health information infrastructure for clinical care and research, including committees of the National Research Council and National Academy of Medicine. She is a recipient of the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Dr. Sheila Van Cuyk is a scientist and program manager working in the areas of biological and chemical threat detection, biosurveillance and risk assessment. Dr. Van Cuyk came to DHS from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) where she was a project lead and technical staff member for multiple efforts in biodetection, biosurveillance, and modeling and simulation. Dr. Van Cuyk began her work at LANL as postdoctoral fellow studying pathogen fate and transport in addition to critical infrastructure vulnerabilities and interdependencies. She was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Colorado School of Mines studying the fate and transport of pathogens and the remediation of contaminated field sites. Dr. Van Cuyk earned her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in environmental science and engineering at the Colorado School of Mines and a B.S. in biology from College of William and Mary.