If you’re interested in serving on the board, please see the call for applications directly below.
2019 – 2023 Board of Directors
President: Craig Voros, Great Lakes Environmental Center
President-elect: Kay Fritz, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
Past President: Brandon Armstrong, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
Secretary/Treasurer: Angela Schmidt, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
At Large Member: Diane Henshel, Indiana University
At Large Member: Jim Lazorchak, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
At Large Member: Roger Yeardley, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
At Large Member: Sarah Bowman, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
At Large Member: Louise Stevenson, Bowling Green State University
At Large Member: Reed Johnson, The Ohio State University
At Large Member: Joe Shaw, Indiana University
At Large Member (non-voting): Roman Lanno, The Ohio State University
OVC Student Representative: James Feller, The Ohio State University
NASAC Representative: Tyler Firkus, Michigan State University
OVC Social Media Chair: Geoff Rhodes, Michigan State University
Meet the Board of Directors
President: Craig Voros has experience in aquatic toxicology and environmental science. At Great Lakes Environmental Center, he assists with research projects for updating ambient aquatic life criteria and various other projects for industrial, municipal and government clients. He recently updated the ambient water quality criteria document for carbaryl and reviewed new toxicology data for chloride, aluminum, cadmium and molybdenum. He also assists with routine laboratory chemistries, testing of effluent samples and survey field work.
President-elect: Kay L. Fritz is a public servant and scientist. She is currently in her seventh year serving as the Toxicologist for the Michigan Department of Agriculture & Rural Development, where she helps protect people, pets, and plants from hazards found in food, feed, and soil. Prior to that she served as a Toxicologist for the Hazardous Waste Section of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, where she evaluated risks from hazardous substances found in soil and water at Resource Conservation and Recovery Act facilities. Kay earned a Master’s Degree from Mankato State University (now Minnesota State University, Mankato) in Toxicological Biology and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Biochemical Nutrition. Current SETAC NA activities include involvement with two committees: 1) Past President of the Meetings Committee, and 2) Member of the Training and Education Committee. Originally from Marion, Ohio, she and her family have lived in Michigan for fifteen years.
Past President: Dr. Brandon Armstrong is a toxicologist with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality where he assesses the hazards of toxic substances discharged into groundwater and surface waters throughout the state and evaluates the impacts of these contaminants on human health. He received a PhD in Fisheries and Wildlife Environmental Toxicology from Michigan State University in 2016, which focused on developing computational models to scale sublethal effects of stressors to impacts on fish populations. Brandon spends his free time feeding his passion for the outdoors by exploring nature and foraging with his wife and two daughters, as well as taking advantage of the many hunting and fishing opportunities that Michigan has to offer throughout the year.
Board Member: Louise Stevenson. Dr. Stevenson’s research combines theoretical and empirical approaches to understand the effects of a toxicant on individual organisms, identify environmental and ecological feedbacks that impact toxicity, and ultimately extrapolate effects between levels of biological organization, such as from the suborganismal to individual-level and from the individual to the population-level. She received a BA in Biology from Amherst College and completed her PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2015 studying the effects of nanoparticles on freshwater systems with Dr. Roger Nisbet. She continued at UCSB in a postdoctoral research position working on extrapolation of suborganismal (e.g. transcriptomic) effects to effects on individual killifish, algae, and Daphnia. She is very excited to join the faculty at Bowling Green State University in the Biology Department as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Toxicology starting August, 2018.
Board Member: Jim Lazorchak has been a member of SETAC since he was a graduate student of Tom Waller while working on his Ph.D. Upon coming to Cincinnati in 1989 he became a member of OVC. He worked on the board for a number of years as President and past president plus worked on the newsletter for many years. He is a member of a number of Interest Groups, Pharmaceuticals, Sediments, Salinization, Senior Resources; Ecological Risk Assessment. As of 2016 he has been a SETAC NA board member. His early career centered on developing fish, invertebrate, and plant bioassessment and ecotoxicology methods to assess the biological integrity of lakes, streams, rivers, and estuaries. His current research activities are: Development of techniques for the detection and assessment of cyanobacteria and other toxic algae and their toxins; Using biological indicators for assessing remedy effectiveness in Great Lakes Areas of Concern; Utilizing genomic tools for bioassessments and ecotoxicity tests to assess ecosystem health and develop water quality criteria and water quality standards and limits that can be used in regulatory programs of emerging contaminants (i.e., EDCs and pharmaceuticals). In addition, he is currently working on research associated with the impacts of resource extraction activities (oil, gas, coal, and minerals) on aquatic and terrestrial resources. He is also learning about invasive toxic Algae like Golden Algae P. parvum. They are invading inland reservoirs due to increases in salinity.
Board Member: Dr. Reed M. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University in Wooster, Ohio. He got his start in research on the intersection between environmental contaminants and honey bees working as a summer undergraduate research assistant at the University of Montana in his hometown, Missoula. Reed went on to receive a B.A. from Wabash College, a M.S. from Wake Forest University and a Ph.D. in Entomology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently teaches two courses at The Ohio State University: Beekeeping and Pesticide Science. His research focuses on determining how bees are exposed to pesticides and combinations and measuring the effect that toxic exposure has on the health of honey bees and other pollinators. The overarching goal of his research is to promote bee health in the context of modern agricultural systems.
Board Member: Roger Yeardley is a multi-disciplinary scientist with over 30 years lab and field experience. He first became a SETAC member in 1995 and published his first article in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in 1996. He has expertise in a range of environmentally-related disciplines including: ecology, microbiology, ecotoxicology (terrestrial and aquatic), environmental chemistry (including fish tissue contaminants), environmental monitoring and assessment, methods development, risk assessment and risk management, and water treatment (drinking water and waste water). As part of this science communication experience he has produced videos and multimedia training for the EPA. Roger’s current research at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency includes projects involving sediment and water quality monitoring with a focus on macroinvertebrates, and developing behavioral ecotoxicology tests to use in assessing contaminated sites.
Board Member: Joseph R. Shaw is an Associate Professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, and holds adjunct appointments in their School of Public Health and Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics. He also holds a partial appointment as a Senior Lecturer in the environmental genomics group at the University of Birmingham, UK. Shaw earned his doctoral degree in environmental toxicology from the Graduate Center for Toxicology at the University of Kentucky in 2001, where he was awarded the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), Proctor and Gamble doctoral fellowship to explore molecular, physiological, and population-level mechanisms of silver toxicity. He then moved to Dartmouth College where he received an NIEHS post-doctoral fellowship to apply emerging Omics technologies to characterize mechanisms of toxicant actions. He joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2007. Shaw was named an utstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) by the NIEHS in 2010 and recognized as an exceptional talent in the environmental sciences by the Royal Society, UK in 2013 for his work investigating toxicant exposure, genome structure and toxic effects on individuals and populations. Contributing to these efforts he is a founding member of both the Daphnia and Fundulus Genomics Consortia where he helps lead over 600 scientists around the world working to develop new models for environmental genomics. He also co-founded the Consortium for Environmental Omics and Toxicology (now called the Environment Care Consortium) that seeks to apply twenty-first century technologies to predictive toxicology. He has been invited to present his research to the National Academy of Sciences, Gordon Research Conferences, and participate in SETAC Pellston workshops among other outlets. Shaw has trained over 500 students in environmental genomics through the Mount Desert Island summer workshop in environmental genomics that he co-developed in 2011, which is now offered annually in the U.S. (funded through the NIH –Big data to knowledge program) and in the U.K. (funded through the Natural Environment Research Council). Shaw was appointed to the editorial board for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in 2009, and in 2013 was promoted to editor. His work as an environmental toxicologist embraces new high-throughput molecular techniques and couples these with ecological and evolutionary theory, statistical analysis, and bioinformatics in order to integrate toxic-response across levels of biological organization, and discover critical, specific and causative molecular toxicological and disease pathways resulting from complex environmental exposures. He applies these research experiences to understand the chemicals around us and lead the way in stopping them from causing harm to both humans and ecosystems.
Board Member (non-voting): 
Dr. Roman Lanno is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology and Associate Director of the Subsurface Energy Resource Center at Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. Prior to that, he was Associate Professor of Zoology and director of the Ecotoxicology and Water Quality Research Laboratory at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, OK. He received his PhD in 1991 from the Department of Biology at the University of Waterloo, ON, Canada, where his dissertation focused on the toxicity of cyanide and thiocyanate in freshwater fish. The primary focus of his research group lies in applied and theoretical aspects of chemical exposure assessment and ecological effects assessment in various environmental media. Specifically, research examines relationships between chemical and biological measures of bioavailability and toxicity endpoints such as lethality, growth, reproduction, or biomarkers, in both aquatic and terrestrial systems. His research group has developed and applied solid-phase extraction techniques as biomimetic or biological surrogates for estimating the bioavailability of organic chemicals and metals. More recent areas of interest include the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing and applications of eDNA in ecotoxicology. He has published on ecotoxicology and risk assessment in both terrestrial and aquatic systems and has edited a Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) book based on the Pellston workshop “Contaminated Soils: From soil-chemical interactions to ecosystem management”. He has been a member of SETAC since 1988, serving two terms on the editorial board for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.Student Board Member:
OVC Student Representative: James Feller is a PhD student in the lab of Dr. Roman Lanno in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University. His work focuses on using environmental DNA as a tool for monitoring ecosystem responses to anthropogenic stressors.
NASAC Representative: Tyler Firkus earned his B.S. in biology from the University of St. Thomas, where he worked on a variety of aquatic toxicology projects. After his B.S., he moved to the University of Wyoming to pursue his M.S. in Zoology and Physiology, co-advised by Dr. Frank Rahel and Dr. Harold Bergman. There, he assessed the effects of warmed winter water temperatures on native fish reproduction, and its application to water temperature standards. He is currently working on a Ph.D. with Dr. Cheryl Murphy assessing the effects of sub-lethal Sea Lamprey parasitism on two morphotypes of Lake Trout.
Social Media Chair: Geoff Rhodes earned his B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Michigan State University. After obtaining his B.S., his focus shifted towards agriculture and he spent two years working on projects related to soil and plant health at MSU. He is currently a PhD. Student at MSU with Dr. Hui Li pursuing a dual degree in Crop and Soil Science & Environmental Toxicology. His research focuses on the fate and transport of emerging contaminants in the agricultural setting; specifically, on the physicochemical and biological properties controlling the uptake and distribution of emerging contaminants in vegetables.