2018 HiBR Conference

Dr. Michael Gottesman has been Deputy Director for Intramural Research at NIH since 1993. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Gottesman completed an internship and residency at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. He was a research associate at NIH from 1971 to 1974. He returned to Harvard Medical School as an assistant professor before returning to NIH in 1976. Dr. Gottesman became Chief of the Laboratory of Cell Biology in the National Cancer Institute in 1990. From 1992 to 1993, he was Acting Director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, and he was Acting Scientific Director of the NCHGR in 1993. During his 26 years of service in the U.S. Public Health Service as a Commissioned Officer, he achieved the rank of two-star rear admiral as assistant surgeon general.

His research interests have ranged from how DNA is replicated in bacteria to how cancer cells elude chemotherapy. He has published extensively on these subjects, with over 500 scientific publications to his credit. During the past thirty years, he has helped to identify and characterize the human gene that causes cancer cells to resist many anticancer drugs. He has shown that this gene encodes a protein that pumps anticancer drugs out of drug-resistant human cancers and has used this information to create gene transfer vectors, to study the pharmacology of many drugs, and to circumvent drug resistance in cancer. He is an elected fellow of the AAAS and the American Association of Physicians, and has been an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2003 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2008. His scientific work has been recognized by highly competitive awards such as the AACR Rosenthal Foundation Award, the Milken Family Medical Foundation Cancer Research Award, the ASPET award, the ASBMB Bert and Natalie Vallee Award, and the DHHS Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service, among others.

Dr. Gottesman has been actively involved in initiating several training and mentoring programs for high school students and teachers, as well as college, medical and graduate students. As Deputy Director for Intramural Research at NIH, he has initiated an NIH-wide lecture series, and reformulated tenure and review processes in the intramural program. He has also instituted training programs for under-represented minority and disadvantaged students, programs to advance the careers of women scientists, loan repayment programs for clinical researchers at NIH, and a clinical research training program for medical students and early career clinical investigators.

Joyce Lee, FAIA, LEED Fellow, is President of IndigoJLD providing green health, design, benchmarking and planning services for exemplary projects and communities. She is among a group of 350 LEED Fellows worldwide. Joyce is also on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and directs building healthy places at the Urban Health Lab.

She has been an Architect Fellow at the National Leadership Academy for Public Health and one of the first LEED accredited professionals in New York City. Joyce served under Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. She was the Chief Architect at the New York City OMB overseeing the survey of major city-owned buildings (over 200 million sqft) and waterfronts with the goals of enhancing long-term planning and identifying green design and development opportunities. During her tenure, the program grew over 25%. She was then the first Active Design Director, with a focus on design excellence and human health, in New York City. The Active Design Guidelines, a publication she co-authored, had won recognition from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as well as the Sustainable Building Industry Council. 

Joyce is the recipient of numerous awards including the Health and Human Services Good Neighbor Award, Platinum Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies, the President's Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York State, and the Aga Khan Award from Harvard/MIT.

Richard V. Piacentini is executive director of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Since 1994 he has guided the Pittsburgh organization from public to private management and is responsible for the green transformation of its facilities and operations, including: the opening of the first LEED® certified visitor’s center in a public garden; the first LEED® certified greenhouse (LEED® Platinum EBOM); the Tropical Forest Conservatory, one of the most energy-efficient conservatories in the world; and the Center for Sustainable Landscapes, a net-zero energy and water building and the only building to meet the Living Building Challenge®, LEED® Platinum, 4 Stars Sustainable SITESTM and Platinum WELL® Building certifications.

The sustainability efforts Piacentini initiated at Phipps are based on recognizing the vital connections between people, plants, health and the planet. This systems-based way of thinking influences the organization’s actions and programs, particularly those focused on awakening children to nature, and promoting human and environmental well-being. Piacentini serves on the board of the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) as past chair and secretary and on the Mission and Community Needs Committee for Magee-Womens Hospital. He is a member of the Biophilic Design Initiative Advisory Committee and the Advisory Committee for the Biophilic Cities Network. He is a Past President and Treasurer of the American Public Gardens Association (APGA), and has received ILFI, USGBC, and APGA leadership awards. Piacentini holds a MS degree in Botany, an MBA and a BS degree in Pharmacy. He is a Registered Pharmacist and a WELL® Accredited Professional.

Kevin Kampschroer is the Chief Sustainability Officer, and the Director, Office of Federal High-Performance Buildings, in the US General Services Administration. He has created the framework for which GSA responds to the challenges of improving a diverse and aging portfolio of commercial buildings so that they can serve the mission needs of their occupants, support effective work, and deliver solid financial performance. He has devised a challenge for companies to dramatically improve the government’s ability to achieve deep retrofits through Energy Savings Performance contracts—which has doubled the amount of energy conservation from these contracts. His team manages the government’s implementation of a comprehensive improvement in the training and certification of facility managers and personnel across the entire Federal government (Federal Buildings Personnel Training Act of 2010). In 2010, the first medical study showing the link between building characteristics on office worker stress and heart function was published; he was a contributing author.  It showed the beneficial results of good lighting, natural light and IEQ. Current work is showing more specific links between the building functions and kinds of office layout and stress, physical activity and health. His goal is to influence and accelerate industry capability and adoption of high-performance principles across all aspects of asset creation, operation, maintenance and disposal. He leads GSA's effort to manage incremental weather and climate-related risks in prudent federal investments for public safety, health and security. He has worked on developing new energy conservation legislation, in expanding the scope of integrated design and related training,

Mr. Kampschroer led the design of improving building performance directed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and directed the compilation of metrics which are still used to measure building performance.  He led the creation of real estate portfolio management; the establishment of performance measures linked to pay and budget; and was the project manager for the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and Trade Center, then the second largest office building in the United States (344 M2 ). Mr. Kampschroer has worked for GSA for more than 43 years and is a graduate of Yale University.

Andrew L. Dannenberg, MD, MPH, is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he teaches courses on health and built environment and on health impact assessment.  He serves as co-chair of the Design and Health Leadership Group of the American Institute of Architects.  Before coming to Seattle, he served as Team Leader of the Healthy Community Design Initiative in the National Center for Environmental Health, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. For the past 15 years, his research and teaching has focused on examining the health aspects of community design including land use, transportation, urban planning, and other issues related to the built environment. He has a particular interest in the use of a health impact assessment as a tool to inform community planners about the health consequences of their decisions. Previously he served as Director of CDC's Division of Applied Public Health Training, as Preventive Medicine Residency director and as an injury prevention epidemiologist on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health in Baltimore, and as a cardiovascular epidemiologist at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda. He received his MD from Stanford University and his MPH from Johns Hopkins, and completed a family practice residency at the Medical University of South Carolina.  With Howard Frumkin and Richard Jackson, Dr. Dannenberg co-edited the book Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability (Island Press, 2011, http://www.makinghealthyplaces.com). 

Internationally recognized pioneer in design and health, Dr. Esther Sternberg is Founding Director of University of Arizona’s Institute on Place and Wellbeing, founding member of the American Institute of Architects Design and Health Leadership Group and AIA Design and Health Research Consortium; has advised the US Acting Surgeon General and Surgeon General’s Office, US General Services Administration, US Department of Defense, US Green Building Council, and the Vatican on the impact of the built environment on health. Previously NIH Senior Scientist and Section Chief, she authored >220 scholarly articles, two popular books including best-selling Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Wellbeing (Harvard University Press), which helped launch the field, and hosted PBS Television Special Science of Healing. A dynamic speaker, Dr. Sternberg is frequently interviewed by the media and invited to keynote, including Australian Green Cities, TEDx (UTA & Tucson), Vatican’s 27th Pontifical Council for Healthcare Workers, and NIH Health in Buildings Roundtable. In recognition of her work, she has received the highest NIH, HHS, and FDA awards, been recognized by the NLM as one of 300 women who “Changed the Face of Medicine,” received an Honorary Doctorate in Medicine, Trinity College, Dublin, and in 2017-2018 Chaired the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine.

Casey Lindberg is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Arizona Institute on Place and Wellbeing. His PhD in experimental psychology from Stanford University and his Master of Architecture from the University of Colorado allow for his expertise in studying how the built environment affects human health, wellbeing, and performance. He is particularly interested in design solutions for the dissimilar effects the built environment has on people due to individual differences. 

Bryan Steverson is a Program Advisor with GSA's Office of Federal High-Performance Buildings where he has led the circadian lighting research program over the past 5 years that has identified several connections between indoor lighting in office buildings and human health benefits and is currently working to translate these findings into guidance, best practices and policies for use in federal buildings. Bryan has over 16 years of experience in high-performance buildings and environmental policy. He has co-authored several articles for the Journal of Sleep Health and the Journal of Lighting Research and Technology on circadian lighting in office buildings. Bryan has also presented GSA’s research findings at several national conferences, webinars, and podcasts such as the US Green Buildings Council podcast entitled Built for Health where he discussed the connections between lighting and health. Bryan resides in Northern Virginia with his wife and three kids. 

Dr. Stephanie Taylor received her MD from Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts in 1984. For the next several decades, she practiced clinical medicine and did academic research in cellular growth mechanisms.

During this time, she became increasingly concerned about the patients who were harmed by medical errors and new infections during their in-patient treatment. Determined to gain a better understanding of the impact of the built environment on patient wellbeing, she returned to school and obtained her Master's Degree in Architecture from Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont.

After working for several years in a healthcare design architecture firm, she founded Taylor Healthcare Consulting, Inc., in order to focus on designing, building and maintaining hospitals and other commercial buildings for optimal occupant safety. Dr. Taylor is currently working on projects that overlay design and engineering schematics, the microbiome of the built environment and data on occupant health to identify design and indoor air management that relate to acute and chronic health conditions. Dr. Taylor has designed hospitals globally, from the United States to Papua New Guinea to Vietnam. In addition to her Taylor Healthcare Consulting work, she is a member of the Harvard Medical School Incite Health Fellowship. This program brings together multidisciplinary teams from across the US, trains them in design thinking and entrepreneurship, and gives them the tools and resources to guide the future of primary care.

To communicate her work and understanding about the fascinating convergence of human health, microbiology and architecture, Dr. Taylor writes a monthly column and bi-annual feature articles for Engineered Systems Magazine and healthcare journals. She is an active member of ASHRAE, ASHE and other associations that develop building codes.

Dr. Taylor lives in rural Stowe, Vermont with her husband and eight dogs. One of her favorite pastimes is skydiving, which she finds is great practice for fearless living!