Steering Committee

Peter G. Pappas, MD, FACP

William E. Dismukes Professor of Medicine
Division of Infectious Diseases
Department of Medicine
University of Alabama School of Medicine
Birmingham, AL USA
Principal Investigator, Mycoses Study Group

Dr Peter G. Pappas is the William E. Dismukes Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, and was the first Tinsley Harrison Clinical Scholar, Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Dr. Pappas attended medical school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, graduating in 1978. He completed his residency in internal medicine, chief medical residency and infectious diseases fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle. Following completion of his fellowship, he was on the clinical faculty at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, NC, through its affiliated hospital in Wilmington, NC. In 1988, he joined the faculty at the University of Alabama in Birmingham School of Medicine, with a focus on HIV and transplant-associated opportunistic infections, especially the invasive mycoses. His main areas of interest have included the development of new therapies for fungal infections and understanding the epidemiology of candidiasis, the endemic mycoses, and cryptococcosis. He has performed numerous clinical trials in candidiasis, cryptococcosis, aspergillosis, sporotrichosis, blastomycosis, and histoplasmosis through his involvement with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s Bacteriology and Mycology Study Group.

Dr Pappas is the Principal Investigator for the Mycoses Study Group Education and Research Consortium, an academic organization that performs multicenter trials, creates treatment guidelines for invasive mycoses, and coordinates CME training in the epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of invasive mycoses. As Director of the MSG, Dr Pappas has been instrumental in moving the consortium toward its current nonprofit status. He has also served as principal investigator of a national network of transplant centers, TRANSNET, in conjunction with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a consortium of industry co-sponsors to provide important epidemiologic and treatment information to transplant recipients who develop proven and probable invasive fungal infections. More recently, he served as co-PI of the Organ Transplant Infection Detection and Prevention Program (OTIP), a collaborative multicenter group funded by the CDC.

George R. Thompson III, MD

Professor of Medicine
Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases
Clinical Consultant UC-Davis Center for Coccidioidomycosis
Department of Medical Microbiology & Immunology
University of California – Davis, Sacramento, California

Dr George R. Thompson completed his medical degree at the University of Missouri and his internal medicine residency and infectious disease fellowship at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio and is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha. He is Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, with a joint appointment in the Departments of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, and Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. He is Clinical Consultant for the UC-Davis Center for Coccidioidomycosis. Dr Thompson specializes in the care of patients with invasive fungal infections and has research interest in fungal diagnostics and host immunogenetics. His current research focuses on the host-pathogen interaction of humans and both Coccidioides spp. (the agent of “Valley Fever”), and Cryptococcus spp. Dr Thompson has substantial expertise in the care of patients with fungal diseases and co-chairs the Mycoses Study Group Education and Research Consortium Education Committee, which is responsible for the dissemination of materials and knowledge to clinicians across the country to improve the care of patients with fungal infections. He has also been appointed to the Coccidioidomycosis Study Group and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) Journal Club, providing editorials in its monthly internationally disseminated IDSA Newsletter.

John W. Baddley, MD, MSPH

Professor of Medicine
Institute of Human Virology
University of Maryland Stewart and Marlene Greenebaum Cancer Center
Baltimore, Maryland

Dr John W. Baddley is a Professor of Medicine at the Institute of Human Virology and the University of Maryland Stewart and Marlene Greenebaum Cancer Center. He previously taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), where he was Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. After receiving an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr Baddley earned his medical degree from Louisiana State University (LSU) School of Medicine, New Orleans. He completed an internship and residency at LSU Medical Center and a fellowship in infectious diseases at University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he was Chief Infectious Diseases Fellow. At UAB he served as Director, Transplant Infectious Diseases, in its Comprehensive Transplant Institute and Director of the Infection Control Program at the Birmingham VA Medical Center. His clinical work focuses on prevention and management of infections in the immunocompromised host. He also participates in outpatient clinic and inpatient consult services for solid organ transplant and cancer patients. In addition, Dr Baddley holds a part-time position at the Baltimore (MD) VA Hospital, where he is involved with antimicrobial stewardship and clinical work in the Infectious Diseases clinic.

Dr Baddley’s research interests include clinical trials and outcomes research related to immunocompromised hosts, focusing on novel antifungal and cytomegalovirus therapies, epidemiology of fungal infections, HIV transplantation, and risk of infection and outcomes with the use of biological therapies/immunomodulators. Dr Baddley currently serves as an Associate Editor of Open Forum Infectious Diseases and is on the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Infectious Disease Exam Committee. He also is co-chair of the education committee of the Mycoses Study Group Education and Research Consortium and the Secretary/Treasurer of the Transplant Infectious Diseases group of the Transplantation Society. He recently served as Chair of the World Health Organization’s Histoplasmosis Guidelines Development Group.

Carolynn Thomas Jones, DNP, MSPH, RN, FAAN

Associate Professor of Clinical Nursing
Director, Master of Clinical Research Program
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio

Dr Carolynn Thomas Jones is Associate Professor of Clinical Nursing and Director of the Master of Clinical Research at The Ohio State University (OSU) College of Nursing with an appointment as Co-Director of workforce development for OSU Center for Clinical Translational Science. She is also the Consulting Executive Director of the Mycoses Study Group Education and Research Consortium (MSGERC). She received her Master of Science in Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Public Health and her Doctor of Nursing Practice from UAB School of Nursing. She has 30 years of experience working in clinical research development and management focusing on infectious disease/mycology clinical trials/epidemiology and cardiology clinical trials. From 1990 to 2000 she was the administrator of the NIAID Mycoses Study Group Central Unit before returning to help form the MSGERC in 2013. Her other research interests include a focus in clinical research workforce development, and in that capacity she is an originating member of the Joint Task Force for Clinical Research Core Competencies and is a Board Member of the Committee on Accreditation for Academic Programs in Clinical Research.

Lisa Tushla, PhD, H(ASCP)

President Terranova Medica, LLC

Dr Lisa A. Tushla is the president of Terranova Medica, LLC, a medical education and communication company based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In a career spanning over 25 years, Lisa has demonstrated a true vocation for medical education, particularly in the fields of infectious diseases and oncology. A physiologist by training with more than 6 years of experience in clinical hematology, Lisa’s primary area of research interest has been in host defense mechanisms and the balance of pro- and anti-inflammatory processes in acute lung injury. Lisa also completed postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, including research peptide mimicry of HIV epitopes, followed by work on defensins at New York University.

Lisa has successfully participated in the launch and maintenance of medical education startups, including PharmAdura, LLC (currently Paradigm Medical Communications) in 2003—growing the award-winning CME unit and taking the company through accreditation. With a move to the West Coast in 2007, Lisa subsequently joined Quest MedEd, LLC, an innovative company focusing on high-quality E-learning activities, primarily in the field of hematology/oncology. Capitalizing on that experience, Lisa launched Terranova in the fall of 2009, and the company has delivered a variety of educational initiatives in live, print, and web-based formats. Since 2010, Terranova has successfully launched dozens of activities on invasive fungal infections in collaboration with the MSGERC, among other partners. In addition, Terranova has spearheaded multiple oncology-focused initiatives in collaboration with advocacy organizations that address supportive care issues (such as management of infectious complications), including http://themelanomanurse.org, http://aimwithimmunotherapy.org, and skincancerinfo.org. Lisa is excited by the opportunity to apply the learnings from Terranova’s advocacy work in oncology to the rapidly evolving educational challenge posed by CAPA and CA-IFIs.

Tom Davis

Chief Operations Officer
Terranova Medica, LLC

Tom is a leading expert in the field of business transformation for companies engaged in the growth or creative stage of their life cycle. He has worked with countless companies, from those on the Fortune 500 to relative unknowns and start-ups as well.

Prior to joining the Terranova Medica team in late 2009, Tom had been a serial entrepreneur. With an educational background in information and computer science, economics, and philosophy, Tom founded Information Works, an Information Design and Development company, in 1996. Based on his experience delivering solutions that offered captivating designs coupled with tangible sales and marketing results, Tom founded the highly successful Elite Products Group in early 1999. It was at Elite Products Group that Tom helped pioneer the comprehensive online traffic and sales analysis system that allowed Elite to become one of the most coveted online distribution channels of the early 2000s.

Most recently, he had redefined business transformation by establishing Fluidity Partners, which works with growing businesses to leverage ideas and solutions across the areas of business development, design services, sales consulting, and marketing and strategic analysis.

Tom’s understanding of business far surpasses that of a typical director. He truly understands what it takes to start, grow, and maintain successful companies and brings those strengths to Terranova as a whole, as well as each initiative he is involved in.