Faculty Biographies

Daniel A. Salmon, PhD, Director

Daniel A. Salmon, PhD, Director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety, has training, research and practice interests in epidemiology and health policy. He has focused on post-licensure vaccine safety and the factors associated with parental decisions to vaccinate or not vaccinate their children. Dr. Salmon served as the Director of Vaccine Safety at the National Vaccine Program Office, where he was responsible for overseeing and coordinating federal vaccine safety activities.

Dr. Salmon has conducted a broad range of studies examining the safety of vaccines, the rates of vaccine refusal, the reasons why parents refuse vaccines, the impact of health care providers and local and state policies on vaccine refusal and the individual and community risks of unvaccinated children. Dr. Salmon is widely published in the medical literature. Dr. Salmon is a professor in the Department of International Health where he also coordinates the PhD program in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control.

Janesse Brewer, MPA, Director of Stakeholder and Community Engagement

Janesse Brewer, MPA, IVS Director of Stakeholder and Community Engagement is an Associate in the Department of International Health. Janesse works primarily in the areas of environment, public health, art, and education. She specializes in mediations and community engagement where science, data, cultural norms, trust, and values intersect. Janesse is a senior practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in mediation, facilitation, and stakeholder engagement.

Ms. Brewer has conducted strategic planning, policy dialogues, site-specific mediations, and public engagement processes at local, state, national and international levels. She has worked with ASTHO, NACCHO, HHS, CDC, health advocates and communities on the issue of vaccine safety and vaccinomics.

Kawsar R. Talaat, MD, Director of Clinical Research

Kawsar R. Talaat, MD, IVS Director of Clinical Research, is a physician who is board certified in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases. She has extensive experience in the design and conduct of Phase 1 and 2 clinical vaccine trials for new vaccines, and in the conduct of challenge studies. She has served as the Principal Investigator for Phase 1 or 2 trials for a variety of vaccines, including influenza (pandemic and seasonal), malaria, Ebola, and bacteria that cause diarrhea including Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) and Shigella. In addition to her work on novel vaccines, Dr. Talaat is interested in the safety of existing vaccines. She is the Johns Hopkins Principal Investigator for the CDC Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment group; Dr. Talaat has served on several working groups looking at vaccine safety and has co-authored a WHO-sponsored systematic review of the safety of influenza vaccines in children. She is also a member of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts Influenza Working Group.

Dr. Talaat is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has a joint appointment in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Matthew Z. Dudley, PhD, MSPH, Director of Epidemiology

Matthew Z. Dudley, PhD, MSPH, IVS Director of Epidemiology, is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Dudley has primarily published in the areas of vaccine safety, vaccine hesitancy, and vaccine communication, and he aims to use his research to improve science communication and positively impact health behavior. He published the book The Clinician’s Vaccine Safety Resource Guide: Optimizing Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Across the Lifespan in 2018.

Dr. Dudley has experience conceptualizing and coordinating large multi-site research projects, designing and performing systematic literature reviews, developing and administering nationally representative surveys, and managing and analyzing large and complex datasets. He has also served as a consultant for international organizations such as the World Health Organization, the Brighton Collaboration, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

Michelle Goryn, MA, IVS Senior Project Coordinator,

Michelle Goryn, MA, IVS Senior Project Coordinator, provides programmatic support for a variety of projects for IVS. She has more than 20 years of experience managing complex projects from concept to implementation and building and maintaining stakeholder engagement among a diverse set of stakeholders from government, academia, nonprofits, and the private sector. Most recently, her work has focused on the creation of digital tools to support decision-making, leading the effort to create a prototype of a performance support tool for faculty entrepreneurs at UNC-Chapel Hill and supporting the creation and content development for LetsTalkShots and LetsTalkCOVIDVaccines for IVS, two tailored educational websites that support vaccine decision-making.

Neal A. Halsey, MD, Director Emeritus

Neal A. Halsey, MD, Director Emeritus of IVS, is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and in the Department of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine. Dr. Halsey served in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) in Atlanta. After 5 years as a faculty member at Tulane University he has been at Johns Hopkins University since 1985.

Dr. Halsey has authored more than 250 peer reviewed publications, 6 books, and 43 book chapters on the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases through vaccination, and he has participated in the development of more than 100 guidelines for the use of vaccines while serving on advisory groups for the WHO Expanded Programme on Immunization, the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) for CDC, and the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases.

Dr Halsey has focused his research and teaching in recent years on vaccine safety.

Peter Z Orton, PhD, Director of Media Design

Peter Z Orton, PhD, is IVS Director of Media Design. For IVS, Dr. Orton’s focus is the effective transfer of health information for knowledge, attitude and behavioral outcomes. He has published in the areas of media design, purposeful narrative, diffusion of innovations, and social cognitive theory/behavioral modeling. His experience as researcher, instructional designer and professional scriptwriter brings to the Institute a happy confluence of communication science and media production skills.

Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, Dr. Orton was on faculty for 18 years at California State University and Stanford University and 3 years as a Fellow at Stanford Hospital’s Center for Research in Disease Prevention. His media career includes Story Editor for Steven Spielberg’s NBC-TV series, “Amazing Stories.”

Tina Proveaux, Coordinator

Tina Proveaux is the Coordinator for the Institute for Vaccine Safety and a Communications Specialist in the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has been been a part of the IVS team since 1997 and coordinates the website, grants and projects. She is published on the topics of vaccines and vaccine safety and has extensive experience editing manuscripts for journals, textbooks and websites. She also has experience developing and administering surveys.