Dr. Chotani has over twenty years of experience as a leader, primary investigator, professor, program manager, and scientist in academia, government, the Department of Defense, and industry. He utilizes his expertise in medicine, public health, infectious and chronic diseases, epidemiology, vaccine/therapeutic sciences, microbiology, disaster mitigation, bioinformatics, biodefense/biosurveillance and management skills to guide science and technology initiatives to develop novel solutions for effectively dealing with current and future scientific challenges. He analyzes and defines highly complex problems and architectures, develops approaches, investigates and synthesizes fully integrated solutions applicable to the needs of an organization, and plans implementation.
Dr. Chotani currently serves as the Director of Chemical-Biological Defense Programs at TASC. In this capacity he also is the Program Manager on the CB Task Order as well as the Chief Scientist to CBTD-J9 at DTRA. From 2008-2010 he served as the Chief Scientist to the Joint Project Manager - Chemical Biological Medical Systems (JPM-CBMS), US Department of Defense. He was responsible for leading joint service, interagency (DoD & Civilian including HHS), international teams of scientists in developing, acquiring and fielding Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved CBRN medical countermeasures (vaccines/therapeutics) and diagnostics.
In 1996-97, while at the Maryland Department of Health & Mental Hygiene (DHMH), he developed the HL-7 Specifications for Electronic Laboratory-Based Reporting of Public Health Information, which has now become a CDC standard. Dr. Chotani previously served as an Assistant Professor and Director of the Global Infections Disease Surveillance and Alert System (GIDSAS) at the School of Medicine and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) from 2001 to 2006 where his main research focus was infectious diseases & surveillance in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Iraq and Jordan. During this time he also served as the medical director of several relief teams, including the Canadian Tsunami Relief Team in Indonesia, the Tsunami Relief Team in Sri Lanka and the Earthquake Relief Team in Pakistan. From 2006-2008 he served the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) as a Senior Science Advisor providing technical and programmatic support to the Chemical Biological Directorate, Joint Science & Technology Office. As a result of his initiatives a new capability area “Bioinformatics,” was incorporated into the Directorate.
Dr. Chotani is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics, Associate at the Center for Global Health at Johns Hopkins University and a Mentor to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He serves the Office of the Maryland Governor as a Member of the Pandemic Influenza Coordinating Committee; Senator Ben Cardin’s Health Advisory Committee; and the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration Commission of Howard County.
Dr. Chotani received his MD from the Eugenio Maria de Hostos School of Medicine in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in 1991, his MPH (1996) and Diploma in Tropical Medicine (2000) from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. He received formal training in disciplines of Vaccine Sciences (School of Public Health), Biomedical Engineering (Applied Physics Laboratory) and Hospital Epidemiology (JHU Hospital) at the Johns Hopkins University.