Staff Biographies

Principal Investigator

Lewis R. Goldfrank, M.D. has worked at Bellevue Hospital Center and New York University Medical Center for the last quarter century. He is currently the first Chairman and Professor of the newly established academic Department of Emergency Medicine at New York University. He is also the Medical Director of the New York City Health Department’s Poison Center. Educated at Clark University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Brussels, Belgium; he graduated from the University of Brussels, Medical School in 1970. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in 1973.

His efforts have led to the development of NYU's Emergency Medicine and Medical Toxicology residencies. He has served as the Chairman of American Board of Emergency Medicine's subboard on Medical Toxicology, the American Board of Medical Toxicology and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. His entire career has been spent working in the public hospitals of New York City emphasizing the role of Emergency Medicine in improving access to care, public health, public policy and medical humanism. He is senior editor of Goldfrank's Toxicologic Emergencies, a standard text in medical toxicology, the eighth edition of which was published in 2006.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. He has participated on three committees on terrorism: Committee on R&D for Improving Civilian Medical Response to Chemical and Biological Terrorism (1998 – 1999); Committee on Assessing Metropolitan Medical Response Teams: Preparedness for Terrorism (1999 – 2002); Committee on Psychological Consequences of Terrorism (2002 – 2003). He chaired the last two of these committees. He currently chairs the standing committee at the IOM on Personal Protective Equipment in the Workforce.

Lead Investigators

Bud Mishra, Ph.D. is Professor of Computer Science, Mathematics and Cell Biology at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the New York University School of Medicine, and holds adjunct positions at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, and at Mt. Siani School of Medicine. He founded and leads the NYU Bioinformatics group, a multi-disciplinary working group that develops computational tools to address issues in biology ranging from deciphering the genomes of pathogens to understanding the inter-cellular communications implicated in cancer. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Esther Chachkis, D.S.W. is recently retired as the Director of Social Work and Therapeutic Recreation at the NYU Medical Center. She was also a member of the Medical Center's Ethics Committee, serving as staff to the Chair. She led the task force to implement a Palliative Care Consultation Program at the hospital and was the recipient of a Homeland Security Grant to train psychosocial volunteers to assist during disaster events.

Over the past 25 years, she has held leadership positions in numerous organizations, including NASW, Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the Society for Social Work Administrators in Health Care. She is a Fellow of the NY Academy of Medicine and was inducted into the Academy of Women Achievers of the YWCA of the City of New York. She is a clinical associate professor at the NYU School of Medicine and the NYU School of Social Work, teaching in the school’s post master's certificate program in palliative and end of life care. She is currently a consultant to the NYU School of Social Work, Division of Life Long Learning and Professional Development. She also teaches in the Smith College School of Social Work's post- Master’s certificate program in palliative and end of life care.

Benard Dreyer, M.D. is the Vice Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics and the Director of the Divisions of General Pediatrics and Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics at the NYU Medical Center. He is the Director of Pediatrics at Bellevue Hospital Center. He graduated in 1970 and did residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine 1970-1973; Albert Einstein College of Medicine: Chief Residency 1973-1974 Dr. Dreyer is interested in developmental-behavioral problems of children, including ADHD, language disorders, learning disorders, autism, parent-child interactions, feeding problems, sleep problems, and growth and developmental problems.

He is also the Co-Chair of the Curriculum Committee for the School of Medicine. His work has focused on the problems of poor immigrant families living in urban environments. He studied the effects of family homelessness on growth of development and health status of children. He also looked at the effect of environmental toxins, such as lead, on early childhood development. And tested low-intensity clinic-based interventions that have the potential to improve early childhood language and cognitive development as well as parent-child interactions. Recently, he begun looking at the effect of media violence on child behavior, and also childhood and disaster related issues.

Terry Fulmer, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N. is Dean of the New York University College of Nursing. She is also Co-Director for The John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing, and Director of the Consortium of New York Geriatric Education Centers. Dr. Fulmer's program of research focuses on acute care of the elderly and specifically, elder abuse and neglect. Her research work on "Dyadic Vulnerability/Risk Profiling for Elder Neglect" is funded by the National Institute on Aging in partnership with the National Institute of Nursing Research. Her publications include over 125 articles, 50 chapters and 16 books. She received her bachelor's degree from Skidmore College, her master's and doctoral degrees from Boston College and her Geriatric Nurse Practitioner Post-Master's Certificate from New York University.

Rae Zimmerman, Ph.D. is Professor of Planning and Public Administration at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and since 1998, Director of the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS), a center, initially funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for collaborative, interdisciplinary activities on infrastructure research, education, and outreach. She leads ICIS' partnership in the DHS-funded Homeland Security Center for Risk and Economic Modeling of Terrorism Events with the University of Southern California, where her work focuses on critical infrastructure. Since the Fall of 2004 she resumed for the fourth time being Director of Wagner's Urban Planning Program.

Project Director

Ian Portelli is the Director for Research at the Department of Emergency Medicine of New York University's School of Medicine. For the past five years Ian has focused on research and leadership within the Disaster Preparedness and Management arena while working with city, state and federal content matter experts in CBRN and natural hazards. Ian has led the Large Scale Emergency Readiness (LaSER) disaster research efforts at NYU's Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response and NYU School of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine. His grants have been funded by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense and Department of Education. He also has application expertise within non-profit, governmental and academic organizations. Ian has multiple journal and chapter publications in the Medical, Social Science, Public Health, Nursing and Computer Science fields. He also acts as a consultant on various city and state agency efforts.

Ian holds a Bachelor of Science joint degree from the University of Malta and Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and a European SRN certification. He pursued a Masters In Science specializing in pediatric biogenetics and hematology oncology from the University of Manchester in the UK, where he also received his Clinical Research Associate certification and is a certified Pediatric Clinical Specialist in the UK. He worked in Beta-Thalassemia research and in urgent care pediatrics emergency departments in Manchester, Birmingham and London. Upon moving to the US, Ian started pursuing a public health-based PhD in Research and theory Development at New York University, and is projected to complete his dissertation about the psychological impact of disaster on children, by early 2009. Finally, his experience is also consistent with two years of UN Peacekeeping efforts with a US based KFOR combat medical unit in the former Yugoslavia during the 1996 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

LaSER Staff Directory

For general inquiries, contact Ian Portelli, Project Director
ian.portelli@nyu.edu
T: 212.992.9930
113 University Place, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10003