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Project D3: Biosensor Fusion

Dr. Andrew B. Feldman is a member of the Principal Professional Staff of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). He heads the Bioinformatics Section of the laboratory's Research and Technology Development Center and also serves on the management board of the Chemical, Biological and Radiological Technology Alliance, an industry partner of PACER, as the representative for APL and the broader Hopkins community. He is currently assigned to the Special Initiatives Office in APL's Research Center, where he is responsible for coordinating new program efforts between APL and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

At APL, Dr. Feldman has developed and led programs in biological defense and related fields addressing national security. He is currently managing development of a portable system for first responders that can detect both chemical and biological agents, with the goal of providing a capability for rapid on-site triaging and confirmation of these threats. He has also advanced the state-of-the-art in proteomics-based approaches to biological threat characterization using mass spectrometry analysis. Dr. Feldman currently leads an initiative with the Bloomberg School of Public Health applying this emerging biodefense tool to global health concerns, such as the high throughput screening of blood for malaria parasites. This initiative produced one of the first validated clinical assays for infectious disease diagnosis using mass spectrometry analysis. The assay involves no consumables and costs pennies per analysis. Dr. Feldman has also developed tools for biosurveillance based on fusion of sensor data with non-traditional indicators of disease outbreaks, such as upsurges in over-the-counter pharmaceutical sales. These Bayesian fusion approaches are now in further development and transitioning into on-going biosurveillance programs led by APL for both the Department of Defense and the Centers for Disease Control.

Prior to joining APL in 2000, Dr. Feldman was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University-Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Division of Health Science and Technology, where he investigated the instabilities of heart rhythms responsible for Sudden Cardiac Death—a leading cause of mortality in Western countries claiming ~300,000 lives per year. This work was conducted under fellowships from the National Institutes of Health and the Heart Rhythm Society. During 1988-1994, Dr. Feldman also managed a private consulting firm specializing in scientific computing. He received his A.B., A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from Harvard University.