Expert Directory

Marriage, Intimacy, Dating, Sex, Couples, family studies

Johnson’s research interests include marriage and family functioning. He can discuss an array of issues related to relationships. Johnson’s most recent research investigated the success rate of government-funded education programs designed to promote healthy marriages, among couples in this same category. He is the author of “Great Myths of Intimate Relationships: Dating, Sex, and Marriage” and has provided discussions on the developmental course of marital distress and dissolution, particularly among young couples and people of color.

immuno-biomarkers, Immunotherapy Clinical Trials, Kidney Cancer Immunotherapy, Renal Cell Carcinoma, immuno-oncology, Combination Therapy, Kidney Cancer

Dr. Timothy M. Kuzel, a leading authority on developing innovative immunotherapy treatments for cancer, is the Rush University Medical division chief of Hematology, Oncology and Cell Therapy and professor of internal medicine
Kuzel is a past winner of the

Alfonso Torquati, MD

Chief of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery

RUSH

Obesity, Bariatric, Bariatric Procedures, weight loss hormone, Lifestyle Modification Advice

Dr. Alfonso Torquati, an internationally renowned expert in metabolic and weight loss surgery, is the chairperson of the Department of General Surgery at Rush University Medical Center.  He also leads the Center for Weight Loss and Bariatric Surgery, which

Cell Metabolism, cancer metabolism

As Scientific Director, Chi Van Dang oversees the execution of Ludwig’s scientific strategy to advance the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, with a special focus on the operations and staffing of the Lausanne, Oxford and San Diego Branches of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. He also works to align these efforts with those of the six independent Ludwig Centers across the U.S. to further cultivate collaboration within Ludwig’s global research community. Dang’s Ludwig laboratory is housed at The Wistar Institute, where he is also a professor.
 
Dang is best known for his elucidation of the molecular signaling pathways and mechanisms governing the unusual metabolism of cancer cells, which require vast quantities of energy and molecular supplies to sustain their wild proliferation. His laboratory was the first to show that a master regulator of gene expression named MYC—a gene whose mutation or aberrant expression is associated with many types of cancer—alters the utilization of a key sugar in cancer cells.

This body of work, which explained a hallmark of tumor metabolism known as the “Warburg effect”, bolstered the hypothesis that cancer cells can become addicted to their reengineered signaling pathways and dependent on particular nutrients. Dang and his colleagues have shown that disrupting those pathways could be a powerful approach to treating cancer and identified drug targets to that end. Therapies based on this work are today in various stages of clinical development.

Dang came to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1967 and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in chemistry from Georgetown University. Dang subsequently obtained an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University and completed a fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco, before returning to Hopkins. There he rose to become Vice Dean for Research and Director of the Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering before moving on to direct the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center. He was recently appointed to the Blue Ribbon panel that provided strategic guidance to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and currently chairs the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors."

Todd Knoop, Ph.D. in Economics

Professor of Economics & Business

Cornell College

Macroeconomics, financial economics, Business Cycle, unemployment numbers, fiscal policy, international trade policy, Inflation

Todd A. Knoop is a Professor of Economics and Business at Cornell College. He is also the author of multiple articles as well as the books "Business Cycle Economics: Understanding Recessions and Depressions from Boom to Bust," "Global Finance in Emerging Market Economies," "Recessions and Depressions: Understanding Business Cycles," "Modern Financial Macroeconomics," and "The traveling Economist." Academic History: Ph.D. in Economics, Purdue University, 1996 M.A. in Economics, Miami University, 1992 B.A. in Economics and Finance, Miami University, 1991

Neuroscience, Pscyhiatry, Psychoanalysis, Research, Mental Health, Psychotherapy, mental health policy, Autism, Attachment, adolescent mental health, Personality Disorders, bipolar, schizophenia, Depression

Andrew J. Gerber, MD, PhD, is medical director and CEO of the Austen Riggs Center and an associate clinical professor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. He is an associate clinical professor at the Child Study Center, Yale University. He is an adjunct associate professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences in the College of Natural Sciences at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the former co-director of the Sackler Parent-Infant Program at Columbia University, former director of the MRI Research Program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and former director of research at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. While in New York, he also had a private psychoanalytic practice.

Dr. Gerber completed a PhD in psychology at the Anna Freud Centre and University College London where he studied with Peter Fonagy and Joseph Sandler, investigating the process and outcome of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in young adults. He completed his medical and psychiatric training at Harvard Medical School, Cambridge Hospital, and Weill Cornell and Columbia medical schools and his psychoanalytic training at Columbia. He trained as a research fellow with Bradley Peterson at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in brain imaging and child psychiatry. He has published and received grants in the areas of developmental psychopathology, attachment, and functional neuroimaging of dynamic processes, including social cognition and transference. He has also been involved in planning and teaching psychoanalytic research as head of the Science Department at the American Psychoanalytic Association and chair of the Committee on Scientific Activities, secretary of the Psychoanalytic Psychodynamic Research Society, and a member of the psychotherapy research committees of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Dr. Gerber is married to Andrea Gerber, PhD, who is a clinical psychologist. They have two young daughters, Samantha and Lila.

Dr. Gerber’s published scholarship shows his deep passion for research. For a list (and downloadable copies) of Dr. Gerber's publications, see: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew_Gerber

Jane Tillman, PhD

Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director, Erikson Institute

Austen Riggs Center

Suicide, Mental Health, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis, Research, Suicide Awareness and Prevention, Suicide Awareness, suicidal behavior, suicidal ideations , Suicidal Thoughts, Education and Training

Jane G. Tillman, PhD, ABPP, is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director of the Erikson Institute for Education and Research at the Austen Riggs Center, a long-term psychiatric hospital and treatment center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. A board-certified clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst, Dr. Tillman is an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center and a clinical instructor in psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Tillman serves on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Psychology, and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is the past-president of the Section on Women, Gender, and Psychoanalysis of Division 39, served two terms as the chair of the Ethics Committee for Division 39, and is a past board member of the Western Massachusetts Albany Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology (WMAAPP). 

RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP
Dr. Tillman is the principal investigator on several externally funded studies related to understanding the contributors to suicidal states of mind and suicidal behavior.  She directs the Suicide Research and Education Initiative for the Erikson Institute. Dr. Tillman has presented and published on a wide variety of topics including dissociation, psychosis, religion, impasses in treatment, embodiment, clinical and professional ethics, research methodology, identifying markers for acute risk of suicide, and the effect of patient suicide on clinicians. She has also written on the intergenerational transmission of suicide.  

TRAINING
Dr. Tillman earned her AB from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and MDiv from Duke University, a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and completed a pre-doctoral internship at the Dartmouth Medical School. She completed a four-year Fellowship in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at the Austen Riggs Center and is a graduate of the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute.

For a list (and downloadable copies) of Dr. Tillman's publications, see: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jane_Tillman

Eric Plakun, MD

Assoc. Med. Dir. / Dir. Biopsychosocial Advocacy

Austen Riggs Center

Mental Health Parity, Mental Health Care, Managed Care, Psychotherapy, Psychiatry, Psychiatric Care, Mental Health, Mental Illness

Eric M. Plakun, MD, FACPsych, DLFAPA, is the associate medical director and director of biopsychosocial advocacy at the Austen Riggs Center, a long-term psychiatric hospital and treatment center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, previously serving for 35 years as the director of admissions. A board-certified psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher, and forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Plakun was a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for more than 20 years. In his role at Riggs, he advocates for “Four Freedoms” we owe to those struggling with mental disorders: [1] Freedom from stigma; [2] Freedom from dehumanizing treatment; [3] Freedom to pursue meaning in life and in treatment; and [4] Freedom of choice in access to medically necessary and effective treatment. 

RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP
Dr. Plakun was co-principal investigator of a prospective follow-along study of treatment outcome that utilized objective measures of psychodynamic constructs. He is the editor of New Perspectives on Narcissism (American Psychiatric Press, 1990) and Treatment Resistance and Patient Authority: the Austen Riggs Reader (Norton Professional Books, 2011), and author of close to fifty published papers and book chapters on the diagnosis, treatment, longitudinal course, and outcome of patients with [1] borderline and other personality disorders, [2] suicidal and self-destructive behaviors, and [3] treatment-resistant disorders. Dr. Plakun has presented more than one hundred scientific papers on these and other topics at professional meetings around the nation and overseas. 

Dr. Plakun is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and founding leader of its Psychotherapy Caucus. He is a Psychoanalytic Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, and in 2004 was appointed this group’s representative to the APA Assembly. He is a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists and past chair of its Ethics Committee, a Fellow of the American College of Psychoanalysts and member of its Board of Regents, a Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Medicine, and a member of the editorial board of Psychodynamic Psychiatry. Dr. Plakun has appeared on CBS’ 60 Minutes as an expert in forensic psychiatry. He has served as an expert witness in federal class action lawsuits addressing the gap between restrictive insurance company access to care standards and generally accepted standards in psychiatry.
He has been quoted in the New York Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail. In 2003, Dr. Plakun was named by the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society as the “Outstanding Psychiatrist in Clinical Psychiatry.” 

TRAINING
Dr. Plakun received his MD from the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. After an internship in medicine at Dartmouth, Dr. Plakun worked as a rural general practitioner in Vermont before completing a psychiatric residency at Dartmouth and a Fellowship at the Austen Riggs Center in psychoanalytic studies.

For a list (and downloadable copies) of Dr. Plakun's publications, see: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric_Plakun

Disaster Recovery, sociological research

Lori Peek is director of the Natural Hazards Center and professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies vulnerable populations in disaster and has conducted field investigations in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the BP Oil Spill, the Christchurch earthquakes, the Joplin tornado, Superstorm Sandy, and Hurricane Matthew. She is currently co-leading a National Science Foundation-funded workshop series on methods of interdisciplinary disaster research and she is a member of the social science team for the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center of Excellence for Risk Based Community Resilience Planning. She is also working on several ongoing projects related to children’s health and well-being before, during, and after disaster.

Nicholas Warner, PhD

Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences

State University of New York at Geneseo

MARS, Mars landing, planetary geology

Nicholas Warner is a planetary geologist who has been a member of the Geneseo faculty since 2014. He is also a SUNY Geneseo alumnus ('00).

Neurosurgery, Neuroscience, Brain Tumor, Hearing, Balance, Radiosurgery, UCLA, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Isaac Yang, M.D., is a nationally renowned neurosurgeon specializing in brain tumors, superior semicircular canal dehiscence (SSCD), and skull base brain surgery at UCLA. Yang is a board-certified neurosurgeon and director of medical student education for the UCLA Department of Neurosurgery; an associate professor of neurosurgery, head and neck surgery, and radiation oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a principal investigator at the UCLA brain tumor laboratory.  
 
Yang is highly sought out by peers, patients and the media for his expertise in neurological diseases and brain health. He has made multiple TV appearances on Good Morning America, CBS' The Doctors, Dr. Drew LifeChangers, and several national news outlets. Originally from Lodi, Calif., Yang developed an interest in neurobiology as an undergraduate. He earned his bachelor’s degree with Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley.  His training followed with a medical degree from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.  Yang completed a neurological surgery residency at the University of California San Francisco, as well as an NRSA NIH-funded F32 postdoctoral brain tumor research fellowship.
 
Yang’s clinical focus has been primarily on brain tumors, both glioblastoma and skull base tumors.  His research efforts have examined antigen expression and manipulation of the immune response to glioblastoma. His work was recognized by a UCSF Clinical and Translational Scientist Training Award and the CNS Dandy Clinical Research Fellowship.  Yang has been the recipient of several distinguished regional and national awards, including the UCSF Medical Center 2010 Exceptional Physician Award, the AANS Integra Brain Tumor Research Award, San Francisco Neurological Society Edwin Boldrey Award for Basic Science Research, American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons Research Award, Kaiser Award for Clinical Research, the national AANS Leksell Radiosurgery Award, and the Tumor Section Ronald L. Bittner Award on Brain Tumor Research.  
 
Yang has published more than 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals and authored more than half a dozen book chapters.  At UCLA, he is investigating the use of nanoparticles and nanotechnology for their application in brain tumor immunotherapy and vaccines.  Dr. Isaac Yang is dedicated to improving the care and treatment of all patients undergoing neurosurgery. 
 
If interested please follow Dr. Yang on Facebook at Isaac Yang UCLA Neurosurgery or find his most recent book, Service Minded Physician, on Amazon.

Health, Health Disparities

Swapna Reddy specializes in analyzing U.S. health care policy and law.

As a clinical assistant professor in the College of Health Solutions, her focus is on how policy can be used to improve health outcomes, increase health care access and equity, and reduce health disparities among minority and underserved populations. Ms. Reddy regularly comments to the media on issues related to U.S. health policy, including the Affordable Care Act, and has been featured on BBC, PBS, NPR, KJZZ, NBC News, Bloomberg News, Phoenix Business Journal and ABC 15.

Depression, Stress, Anxiety, Relationships

Dr. Maidenberg has been teaching and supervising clinicians and psychiatry residents for over 25 years. He provides cognitive behavioral therapy for a variety of anxiety disorders and depression.

Bryan Cunningham

Executive Director, UCI Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute

University of California, Irvine

Cybersecurity, Privacy, data protection

As the founding executive director of UCI’s multidisciplinary Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, Bryan Cunningham is focused on solution-oriented strategies that address technical, legal and policy challenges to combat cyber threats; protect individual privacy and civil liberties; maintain public safety, economic and national security; and empower Americans to take better control of their digital security. 

Cunningham is a leading international expert on cybersecurity law and policy, a former White House lawyer and adviser and a media commentator on cybersecurity, technology and surveillance issues. He has appeared on ABC, Bloomberg, CBS, CNN, FOX and other networks. 

Cunningham has extensive experience in senior U.S. government intelligence and law enforcement positions. He served as Deputy Legal Adviser to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. He also served six years in the Clinton administration as a senior CIA officer and federal prosecutor. He drafted significant portions of the Homeland Security Act and related legislation, helping to shepherd them through Congress. He was a principal contributor to the first National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, worked closely with the 9/11 Commission and provided legal advice to the President, National Security Advisor, the National Security Council, and other senior government officials on intelligence, terrorism, cyber security and other related matters.

Cunningham is a founding partner of the Washington, DC-Los Angeles firm Cunningham Levy Muse, and his law practice has included assisting Fortune 500 and multinational companies to comply with complex legal regulations under U.S. federal law, myriad state laws and the numerous privacy and security requirements in the European Union and other overseas jurisdictions. 

He was founding vice-chair of the American Bar Association Cyber Security Privacy Task Force and was awarded the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement for his work on information issues. He has served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Biodefense Analysis, the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age and the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Cyber Security Task Force. He is also the principal author of legal and ethics chapters in several cybersecurity textbooks.

Wildfire, Climate Change

I balance cutting-edge fieldwork with analysis of global ecological data to examine how human changes to fire patterns are encouraging forest-savanna transitions, degrading ecosystems and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Together with an international community of collaborators, I work across disciplines and scales—from individual organisms to entire ecosystems.

gravitational wave, Neutron Stars, Astrophyics, LIGO, Physics & Astronomy, Gamma Rays

Jocelyn Read is an astrophysicist who studies neutron stars — the remnant cores of dead stars that didn't quite have enough mass to end up as black holes. A leading binary neutron star expert, she focuses on how matter behaves at the extremely high densities inside neutron stars and how this might be measured from astronomical observations of X-rays, gamma-ray bursts and gravitational waves. 

She and her students work to understand and model how neutron stars interact, collide and radiate energy to learn more about their structure and composition. 

Read joined Cal State Fullerton in 2012 and has received numerous grants for her research. Most recently, she was awarded nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation to lead a project to recruit and support underrepresented students, in particular Latino students, in gravitational-wave science. The grant supports CSUF and Citrus College students engaged in undergraduate research, as well as CSUF alumni in the doctoral program in gravitational-wave astrophysics at Syracuse University.

A native of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Read earned her doctorate in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She completed postdoctoral work at the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany and at the University of Mississippi. 

Read, a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, serves as associate director of CSUF's Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center. She is the recipient of the 2017 "Women of the Year" award in the category of science and technology from state Sen. Josh Newman. 

For additional CSUF materials and resources, please visit these websites:
•	CSUF News Center: http://news.fullerton.edu
•	CSUF Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center: http://physics.fullerton.edu/gwpac/
•	CSUF Scientists Contribute to First Discovery: http://news.fullerton.edu/gravitational-waves/default.aspx

Addiction, Opiods, Cannabis, Alcoholism, Psychiatry

Dr. Larissa Mooney is a board certified addiction psychiatrist with expertise in the treatment of substance use disorders and psychiatric comorbidity.  After obtaining residency training at New York University, she completed a fellowship in addiction psychiatry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.  Dr. Mooney is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Addiction Medicine Clinic, where she teaches psychiatrists in training in the clinical management of dual diagnoses.  Dr. Mooney serves on the Executive Board of Directors for the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP).  She has conducted research on treatment interventions for addictive disorders, including methamphetamine, cocaine and opioid use disorder and has received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to study clinical outcomes in individuals with cannabis use disorder.   

Donald Kohn, MD

Professor, Department of Microbiology, Immunology

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences

Adenosine, X Linked Diseases, Bubble Boy Disease, Sickle Cell Disease, Genetic Disease, Gene Editing, Gene Therapy, Stem Cell, Stem Cell Therapy

Donald B. Kohn, M.D., studies the biology of blood stem cells, which are located in the bone marrow and have two important properties: they can duplicate themselves and they can create all types of blood cells. Over the course of 30 years of research, Kohn has developed new clinical methods to treat genetic blood diseases using blood stem cells that have been modified to remove genetic mutations.

Kohn’s blood stem cell gene therapy method collects some of a patient’s own blood stem cells and either adds a good copy of the defective gene or fixes the broken genes to eliminate disease-causing mutations. The patient then receives a transplant of their own corrected stem cells, which will ideally create an ongoing supply of healthy blood cells. Importantly, this method eliminates the risk of rejection associated with receiving a bone marrow transplant from a different person, meaning the patient doesn’t have to take a lifelong supply of anti-rejection drugs. 

Kohn’s clinical trials for adenosine deaminase-deficient severe combined immunodeficiency (also known as ADA-SCID or bubble baby disease), a condition where babies are born without an immune system and often don’t survive past the first two years of life, have cured more than 40 babies to date. Babies with the condition and their families have traveled to UCLA for this life-saving treatment from as far away as Lebanon and a new company was formed in 2016 to further develop the therapy and make it available at other centers and to more patients. 

Kohn is now applying similar blood stem cell gene therapy techniques in clinical trials for two other diseases. One of these diseases is X-linked chronic granulomatous disease, a rare inherited immunodeficiency disorder that prevents white blood cells from effectively killing foreign invaders such as bacteria, fungi or other microorganisms. If untreated, patients often succumb to chronic granulomatous disease within the first decades of life. 

The second disease is sickle cell disease, the most common inherited blood disorder in the United States. This disease causes abnormal ‘sickle-shaped’ red blood cells that block small blood vessels and do not provide the appropriate amount of oxygen to the body, resulting in debilitating pain and organ damage. Kohn’s clinical trial seeks to overcome or repair the genetic mutation that causes this devastating disease, which impacts millions worldwide. 

Kohn earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin School Of Medicine. He completed a pediatric internship and residency in Wisconsin followed by a medical staff fellowship in the Lymphoid Malignancies Branch (formerly the Metabolism Branch) of the National Cancer Institute.

Kohn began working on gene therapy as a fellow at the National Institutes of Health in 1985 and then began practicing as a pediatric bone marrow transplant physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in 1987.  While practicing at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, he started his own lab focused on stem cell research and has continued this work, advancing new therapies from the lab to the clinic. 

Concussion, concussion and football, traumatic brain injuries, Youth, Neuroplasticity, post-traumatic epilepsy, concussion and sports, Sports-Related Head Injury, Brain Development, helmet studies, Neuroimaging, Genetic Markers

Before joining UCLA, Giza worked on the Yosemite Search and Rescue team. In 2011, he traveled to Afghanistan as a civilian advisor to the U.S. Department of Defense. He co-chaired the American Academy of Neurology committee that developed an evidence-based practice guideline for the management of sports concussions from 2009-2013. He currently serves on advisory committees for traumatic brain injuries/concussion with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, National Collegiate Athletic Association, Major League Soccer and U.S. Soccer Federation. He has been a clinical consultant for the National Football League, National Hockey League and Major League Soccer. 

Dallas Brooks, MAS

Director, Raspet Flight Research Center

Mississippi State University

Aviation, Flight, Drones, Aeronautical

Brooks is the director of Mississippi State’s Raspet Flight Research Center and also serves as the associate director of the MSU-led Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE), a coalition of 22 of the nation’s leading aviation and unmanned systems research universities tasked with developing technical solutions to address the challenges of safely integrating UAS into the national airspace.
 
He investigates, evaluates, proposes, selects and directs UAS research projects and initiatives to be executed under the FAA’s UAS Center of Excellence. He also evaluates research results and makes recommendations to the FAA on proposed standards for UAS system design, construction, performance, flight standards and operational procedures that are designed to enhance the safety of UAS operations nationwide and around the world.
 
A recognized national leader in unmanned systems integration, Brooks engages and coordinates with national and international regulatory, support and administrative agencies to help ensure that the tremendous capabilities of unmanned systems are realized.  His aviation and technical experience spans over 30 years, more than 20 of which were in service to America’s armed forces at home and overseas. 
 
A 26-year U.S. Air Force veteran, he held key leadership positions in aviation and communications, including serving as the USAF’s chief of UAS integration. He also served as the chair of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Airspace Integration Integrated Product Team for the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. In this role, he led a joint team working to enable UAS access to support Department of Defense operational, training and R&D requirements.
 
Brooks earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the fields of aeronautics and aviation/aerospace operations. He also holds a master’s degree in telecommunications management from Webster University and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Auburn University at Montgomery. For more on Brooks, see http://www.raspet.msstate.edu/director/.
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