Tom Slezak

Mr. Slezak recently retired from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he was an Associate Program Leader for Informatics. His career at LLNL spanned 40 years. He was a significant contributor to the Human Genome Program and a developer of the nation-wide BioWatch system. Throughout his career he has chaired many NIH grant review sessions for infectious disease proposals. He is a renowned bio-defense expert and during his career has served on numerous National Academy panels and DoD Standing Committees focused on Biodefense programs. Mr. Slezak also co-chaired a Blue Ribbon Panel on bioinformatics for the CDC that resulted in major new funding for Advanced Molecular Diagnostics and bioinformatics. Mr. Slezak managed a Pathogen Bioinformatics team at LLNL for 19 years, where the team developed a variety of genetic-based assays and analysis software to support a broad range of pathogen detection and forensic programs in biodefense and human/animal health. The software developed by his team is in regular use world-wide.