Sara Baltozer, MPH, has an expertise in public health and disaster preparedness. Previously, she worked as an epidemiologist in local government where she played a key role in responding to natural disasters, outbreaks, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Her primary interests are in disaster preparedness and emergency planning for the government and healthcare sectors. At Gryphon, her work focuses on policy planning and analysis. Sara has a particular talent for translating complex ideas into concise and helpful guidance. She holds a BS in Genetics and an MPH from the University of California Davis.

Dr. Peyton Tebon is a bioengineer with experience in precision medicine, emerging biotechnologies, and translational biomedical research. He has extensive wet lab experience investigating tumor models and building microfluidic devices for clinical applications. His doctoral work focused on developing automated laboratory procedures and computational pipelines to support functional precision medicine platforms to match patients to effective cancer treatments. At Gryphon, he is involved with projects related to All-Hazards Preparedness and Emerging Technologies. Dr. Tebon has a B.S. in BioMolecular Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Lauren Plaine, MPS, RN, CEN is an emergency management and medicine professional with 10 years of practice leading, guiding, and teaching others though crises and disasters. Her work at Gryphon focuses on emergency management planning, policy, and training, particularly related to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense. Previously, she supervised a hospital emergency department within a Level 1 trauma center. Lauren holds a BSN from Old Dominion University and an MPS in Emergency and Disaster Management from Georgetown University. Her graduate research focused on Crisis Standards of Care within COVID-19.

Stephen Tarnacki has been supporting federal agencies for over 20 years in a vast range of CBRN Consequence Management projects. After serving 10 years in the US Army in CBRN defense, he returned to the public sector supporting CBRN logistical and technical support activities. Some of his key roles have been supporting the National Guard WMD Civil Support Teams at the consequence management support center and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) CBRNE Response Team (CRT). At Gryphon, Mr. Tarnacki manages CBRN technical, logistics, and training management support activities for PFPA/CRT. He’s a subject matter expert in CBRN COTS equipment life cycle management.

Louise Sumner, MPH, has supported federal agencies on projects to improve public health for over a decade, with a particular interest in biosurveillance, emerging infectious disease, and population health. Her work has focused on the interplay between biology and human behavior with the goal of developing evidence-based disease models, risk assessments, and surveillance applications. Her work in population health has included chronic and infectious disease epidemiology, and evaluations of healthcare needs following an outbreak or attack. Ms. Sumner holds a BS in Biology from the University of Virginia and an MPH concentrating in Epidemiology from Harvard University.

Dr. Froggi (Shawn) Jackson brought a unique blend of experience in environmental and biomedical sciences when she joined Gryphon in 2013. With an undergraduate degree in marine science from Duke, Froggi earned a PhD in Virology from Harvard, studying HIV vaccine immunology in animal models. She combined her interests in immunology, virology, and marine biology in post-doctoral studies of anti-viral immunology in fish, sharks, and frogs, with an emphasis on viruses important to the aquaculture industry. At Gryphon, Froggi has expanded her expertise, leading a variety of studies of chemical and biological risk assessment.

Kent Duke comes from a strong military background with 22 years’ experience as a logistician, 5 years in hazmat management and 10 years as a hazmat first responder. He then became a Government contractor for Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) logistical and technical support activities on military installations throughout the United States, Japan and Korea. Currently Mr. Duke is the Operations technical and logistics support lead for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) CBRNE Response Team (CRT).

Grace Adams, MS, CHP, CIH is an experienced health physicist with a particular interest in developing models of radioactive and nuclear effects to inform national security and emergency response plans. With a BS in nuclear engineering from RPI and an MS in Radiation Health Physics from Oregon State University, she joined Gryphon in 2013 where she has investigated the consequences of radioactive fallout on critical industries, developed new models to assess the inhalation risk of radionuclides, and estimated the consequences of nuclear detonation on a variety of environments—projects all designed to improve the nation’s preparedness and response to radiological and nuclear events. Grace became a Certified Health Physicist (CHP) in 2019.