Panel Bios

Paula Olsiewski, PhD, is a Contributing Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She is a pioneering leader in policy and scientific research programs in the microbiology and chemistry of indoor environments. Dr. Olsiewski leads the Center’s work on indoor air quality policy to mitigate airborne disease and global catastrophic biological risks. 

During her two decades at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, she led innovative and multidisciplinary programs that inspired, accelerated, and produced lasting impact. Her expertise in partnering with academic, governmental, and for-profit stakeholders fostered innovation and built research capacity through the creation of diverse stakeholder networks. Her accomplishments include the creation and direction of the microbiology of the built environment, chemistry of indoor environments, and biosecurity programs.

Dr. Olsiewski is recognized as a leading expert in biosecurity and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was Chair of the US EPA Homeland Security Research Subcommittee and was a member of the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors Executive Committee 2014-2022. Dr. Olsiewski is a commissioner of the Global Commission on Healthy Indoor Air, a member of the Academy of Fellows of the International Society for Indoor Air Quality and Climate, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in chemistry. She received a PhD in biological chemistry at MIT and received a BS in chemistry, cum laude, from Yale.

David J. Brenner, PhD, DSc, is the Higgins Professor of Radiation Biophysics at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Director of the Center for Radiological Research (CRR) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, the oldest and largest radiation biology research center in the United States.

Dr. Brenner’s research focuses on understanding the biological effects of radiation both at both high and low doses. His work spans from nuclear power, to cancer therapy, to medical imaging, as well as to new technologies for responding to large-scale radiological incidents. He has been particularly influential in limiting un-needed CT scans and in pioneering what is now the standard radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer.

Over the past decade, Dr. Brenner has pioneered the use of far-UVC light, demonstrating that specific wavelengths of ultraviolet light can efficiently kill airborne pathogens, including viruses and drug-resistant bacteria, while remaining safe for human exposure in indoor room settings. 2026 has seen the first direct demonstration that far-UVC light can dramatically reduce human disease transmission in public spaces.

Originally from Liverpool, England, Dr. Brenner has degrees from Oxford University and the University of London, and his PhD from the University of Surrey. He has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific papers as well as two books on radiation for general audiences.

Dr. Brenner has received numerous honors, including the Radiation Research Society’s Failla Gold Medal and the Oxford University Weldon Prize for contributions to applying mathematical methods to biological problems.

Brian Renda, PhD, is the built environment program director at Blueprint Biosecurity, where he oversees research, evaluation, and implementation pathways for pathogen mitigation countermeasures for pandemic preparedness and response. His efforts span targeted research, strategic grantmaking, and technical analysis that helps translate scientific evidence into policy-relevant insights. This work clarifies the safety, effectiveness, and real-world performance of tools such as far-UVC and other emerging countermeasures that may play a role during future outbreaks. Prior to joining Blueprint, Dr. Renda held a variety of technical and commercial roles at Ginkgo Bioworks. He is an alumnus of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI) fellowship and holds a doctorate in cell and molecular biology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Leo J. Schowalter, PhD, was employed by the GE Global Research Center after receiving his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois in 1981.  He was a professor in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Physics Department from 1987 and became Department Chair in 1997, the same year that he co-founded Crystal IS with another former GE colleague. Crystal IS commercialized single-crystal aluminum nitride substrates and UVC LEDs based on pseudomorphic AlGaN on these substrates for disinfection and instrumentation applications.  Crystal IS was acquired by Asahi Kasei in 2011 and continues to lead the industry in the development of larger size and lower cost of high-quality aluminum nitride substrates.

In 2017, Dr. Schowalter was appointed the Asahi Kasei Innovative Devices Industry-Academia Collaborative Chair at Nagoya University in Professor Hiroshi Amano’s laboratory and, in 2019, this group announced the world’s first UVC laser diode with Asahi Kasei and Crystal IS support.  Dr. Schowalter continues his collaboration with Professor Amano as a Visiting Professor to the present day. In 2020, Dr. Schowalter and his Asahi Kasei colleagues announced the best performance (at that time) for far-UVC LEDs in the 230nm to 240nm wavelength range and Dr. Schowalter has now joined Visium which is a startup dedicated to developing cost-effective far-UVC for human-safe disinfection of shared spaces.  Dr. Schowalter leads the recently established (2025) Visium Ultralabs in the Cornell Tech Park to further push the AlGaN ultrawide bandgap semiconductors into the far-UVC and enable solid state far-UVC light sources at lower cost. He is also a Visiting Professor at Cornell University