Dr. Liza Ovington received her Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Duke University in 1986 and worked in wound care product development research at Johnson & Johnson for 5 years before leaving to pursue clinical and preclinical research in wound healing at the University of Miami School of Medicine in the Department of Dermatology & Cutaneous Surgery. She subsequently developed and managed wound and continence specialty care programs for a national home healthcare agency, was board certified by the American Board of Wound Management in 1995 and served as their President and on their Board.

Liza is currently a Fellow of the American College of Certified Wound Specialists, a diplomate of the American Professional Wound Care Association, achieved certification in medical writing from the American Medical Writers Association and has served on the editorial boards for several wound care journals. She was president of her own wound care consulting company from 1995 through 2004 where her clients included companies such as Coloplast, ConvaTec, DuPont , Ferndale Laboratories, HealthPoint, KCI, Medline, Molnlycke, Urgo Laboratories, Smith & Nephew, and Westaim Biomedical. She rejoined Johnson and Johnson in late 2004 in the Ethicon Medical Affairs department with responsibility for wound closure, wound healing and infection prevention. She retired from Ethicon in 2020 and is again consulting in the areas of wound management, infection prevention, and chemistry.

Dr. Eric David Rasmussen is the CEO of Infinitum Humanitarian Systems in Seattle, Washington. He is an internal medicine physician with both undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University and a European Master’s degree in disaster medicine from the UN World Health Organization’s affiliate CEMEC (Centre European pour la Médecins des Catastrophes) in Italy. He was elected a Fellow of the American College of Physicians in 1997 and a National Fellow of the Explorers Club in 2014.

Rasmussen served in the U.S. Navy for 25 years aboard nuclear submarines, amphibious ships, and aircraft carriers, with positions that included:

• Joint Task Force Surgeon (Forward) for the Hurricane Katrina response;
• Team Lead for the Banda Aceh Tsunami Response from the Office of the Secretary of Defense;
• Fleet Surgeon for the US Navy’s Third Fleet, responsible for the eastern Pacific;
• Director of an Intensive Care Unit; and,
• Chairman of an academic Department of Medicine in Seattle.

His wartime deployments included Bosnia three times, Afghanistan twice, and Iraq for nine months. While in uniform, Dr. Rasmussen was appointed a Principal Investigator by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. His work led to his selection as DARPA’s Principal Investigator of the Year in 2003.

After retiring from the Navy he was appointed the Founding CEO of the TED Prize awarded to Dr. Larry Brilliant, then Executive Director of Google.org. In addition to his current work in the Marshall Islands, Ukraine, Yemen, and the Yucatan rainforest, Rasmussen also leads the Global Disaster Response Team for the Roddenberry Foundation, supported by the Star Trek franchise. That team has deployed to Supertyphoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the Nepal earthquake, Hurricane Mathew in Haiti, three times to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and to Ukraine in 2022.

Rasmussen also served as the founding Chief Medical Officer for Briotech, co-authoring both the “Handbook of HOCl” and the UN’s WHO Essential Medicines List application for hypochlorous acid. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic he coordinated the independent laboratory testing of Briotech’s HOCl for the US EPA and FDA.

He is currently the research director for the Kwajalein Atoll Sustainability Laboratory in the Marshall Islands, and a Member of the Loomis Council at the Stimson Center in DC. He is a former Fellow at the Atlantic Council, the Institute for Human-Machine Cognition, and the Rocky Mountain Institute. In 2012 he was appointed a member of the US National Academy of Science’s Committee on Grand Challenges in Global Development. 

Read more about Dr. Rasmussen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rasmussen_(physician)

Dr. Lori Robins, PhD, BS, is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington Bothell. She received a BS in Biochemistry from Brandeis University and a PhD in Bioorganic Chemistry from the University of California, Davis. She also studied lipid biochemistry as a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University, Durham, NC. Prior to coming to the University of Washington Bothell, she was an Assistant Professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.

Lori has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She has 25 peer-reviewed publications and has presented her work at international conferences on infectious disease research.

Lori has worked on projects related to HOCl since 2015.

Dr. Michael Stacey is a renowned vascular surgeon who came to Canada from Australia in 2014 as the Surgeon in Chief at Hamilton Health Sciences and Professor in the Department of Surgery at McMaster University.

He completed his medical degree at the University of Western Australia, is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, and has a Doctor of Surgery degree (PhD equivalent).

Dr. Stacey took on the role as Chief Medical Executive and Executive Vice President Academic at Hamilton Health Sciences in 2018 until mid-2023.

In addition to his practice in vascular surgery, Dr. Stacey has established active research programs in wound healing in both Australia and in Canada. He was the first President of the Australian Wound Management Association (now Wounds Australia), and the founding Chair of the World Union of Wound Healing Societies.

Dr. Stacey has a passion for advancing wound care for patients. He has previously established a multidisciplinary diabetic foot ulcer clinic and a venous leg ulcer clinic in Australia and is currently working to establish similar clinics in Canada.

Dr. Jeff Williams had a long career in academic microbiology and infectious diseases, retiring after 27 years from his position as Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University to found a biotechnology start-up, HaloSource Inc, in Seattle, WA in 1998. Retiring, again, in 2014, he has remained active as technical advisor to several companies in the PNW region, specializing in the areas of antimicrobial chemistry and disinfection.

Author of over 200 scientific papers and textbook chapters , he served four years as a member of the Board of Counselors to the US-NIH Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and has been a frequent consultant to the World Health Organisation of the UN in Geneva, Switzerland. Jeff was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1996, and served as retained consultant to first Merck Inc. (1980-82), then Pharmacia (now Pfizer Inc.) (1983-1999) on therapeutic drug discovery and development. He has a long standing interest in tropical infectious diseases, starting with his appointment as staff scientist for WHO in Argentina 1968-71, and for 15 years directed a collaborative NIH-funded Program Project on Infectious Diseases in Sudan. He holds degrees in Veterinary Science (B.V.Sc., University of Bristol, UK, 1964), and Pathobiology (Ph.D, University of Pennsylvania, 1968), where he was a Fulbright Scholar (1964-68).