Translational Toxicology

Michael D. Waters is a former government scientist with more than 35 years of experience in research and research management positions at US EPA and NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, NC USA.  He retired as Chief Scientist, Emeritus, from Integrated Laboratory Systems (ILS), Inc. in 2013.  He served as Assistant Director of the NIEHS National Center for Toxicogenomics from 2000 to 2007, and was responsible for a major initiative to develop the Chemical Effects in Biological Systems (CEBS) toxicogenomics knowledgebase.  CEBS is now the data repository of the US National Toxicology Program and is being utilized by the NIH and other government agencies as well as the academic, industrial, and international regulatory scientific communities for the deposition, retrieval and interpretation of toxicology and toxicogenomics data.  At NIEHS, he served on the NIH Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Roadmap Working Group, the US FDA Advisory Committee for Pharmaceutical Science, Pharmacology and Toxicology Subcommittee, the Toxicogenomics and Risk Assessment Committee of the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS), the Advisory Board of the Microarray Gene Expression Data (MGED) Society and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Rat Genome Database (RGD).  For 30 years he directed research in cellular pathology, biochemistry, and genetic toxicology in various capacities at the EPA in RTP, NC. He also served EPA as an Assistant Laboratory Director with programmatic responsibility for international, waste, and multi-media research programs.  At EPA he conceived, designed, and helped to develop the EPA Gene-Tox database, now hosted by the National Library of Medicine.  He also developed the EPA/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Genetic Activity Profile (GAP) Database which formed the basis for the use of short-term tests in the evaluation of presumptive human carcinogens by the IARC.  His research interests have centered on the evaluation of chemically-induced mutations and altered molecular expression in the etiology of cancer and genetic disease. A widely-published scientist, he has edited Mutation Research-Reviews for nearly 20 years and has held adjunct professorships at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University.  He has served as President of the Environmental Mutagen Society and the International Association of Environmental Mutagen Societies.  The databases he developed and a number of his publications are recognized as important advances that have significantly impacted the fields of genetic toxicology, carcinogenesis, toxicogenomics, and risk assessment.