Staff

Marty Vanier, DVM

Marty Vanier, Director, joined NABC in 2003. She recently served as the senior program manager for strategic partnership development for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility through an inter-agency personnel agreement between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and K-State.

Dr. Vanier received a Bachelor of Science in agriculture (animal science) and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from K-State. Upon completion of her DVM, Dr. Vanier served as science coordinator for the Animal Health Institute in Washington, D.C. She also has served as deputy director for information and legislative affairs in the Food Safety and Inspection Service, research assistant for the Food Safety Consortium in the Department of Animal Sciences and Industry at K-State, executive director of the Kansas Agricultural Alliance. She has been principal investigator for multiple NABC projects and, as director, has coordinated research teams, monitored legislative and federal agency activities, and led activities in support of relationship development between NABC and state and federal agencies, industry groups, emergency management, law enforcement, and the intelligence community. She received the 2002, 2012, and 2014 President’s Award and the 2009 Veterinarian of the Year Award from the Kansas Veterinary Medical Association. She served as KVMA President in 2015–2016.

Anna Pees, DVM, MPH

Anna Pees graduated from University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Science in Animal Science, and later graduated from Kansas State University with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree and Master of Public Health degree with an emphasis in zoonotic and infectious disease. Following the completion of her DVM, Dr. Pees practiced small animal medicine for seven years in Colorado, Kansas, and the United Kingdom. Dr. Pees entered into the field of public health with USDA-APHIS Veterinary Services where she served as a Veterinary Medical Officer in Veterinary Export Trade Services. She joined NABC in 2022 to serve as project manager and she assists in the development of research projects and training programs. Dr. Pees has received supplemental training in planning and preparedness for emergency response, specifically pertaining to animal disease outbreaks.

Savannah Greiner

Savannah Greiner joined NABC in 2021, and shares a dual role as an emergency manager for Kansas State University providing expertise for NABC projects. As the coordination lead for the University's Emergency Management Advisory Group, she manages the efforts to link multiple operational layers of the university and bridge the decision support needs across the operating footprint of all its locations.
She graduated from the University of Kansas with a Masters in Homeland Security and worked for KU emergency management. She has received significant training with various FEMA certifications and KDEM training. Greiner provides expertise in Incident Command System, exercise development and training, county level preparedness, and university-community outreach.

Adrian Self

Adrian Self is an Operations Research Analyst providing management for advanced technological research and development with multiple NABC projects. He contributes expertise in project/proposal analysis, scheduling, scoping, and resource coordination for multiple contracts/grants within the center’s portfolio.

Self brings far-reaching know-how to NABC projects in the areas of academic research documentation for audit, inspection, and accreditation; interfacing with various levels of university administration/faculty and industry in advancing research work products; and organizing broad resources for institutional land grant missions. He supports safeguarding research enterprise programs detailed with maintaining issue awareness for security requirements associated with processing sensitive info/data supporting sponsored contracts, projects, and programs.

His industry and academic background include practice in economics research, investment analysis, risk underwriting and risk analytics as well as knowledge technology, communications, and overseas languages and cultures. Prior to joining the NABC, Self was with the University Research Compliance Office at K-State, where he served to coordinate multiple compliance committees for research across the university in the Office of the Associate Vice President for Research. He has served since 2011 in a variety of roles at NABC including preceding positions of Administrative Director and Prospect Researcher.

 

Notable Alumni

 

David Hogg

David Hogg served as project director. David's contributions included: serving as a trainer for the Animal Disease Response Training (ADRT) curriculum for non-traditional FAD response personnel; foreign animal disease response exercise development, facilitation, and evaluation, serving on the Kansas Department of Agriculture foreign animal disease working group, and acting as an emergency management subject matter expert for ongoing university and NABC projects.

 

Ken Burton

Ken Burton was program director. He was a principle investigator and co-principle investigator on multiple projects involving transboundary animal disease (TAD) response planning and training, identification of lessons learned from livestock emergency response exercises and events, and risk analysis of high-consequence TAD significant to the U.S. livestock industry. He retired from K-State in 2018 and transitioned to the USDA where he now serves as the NBAF Deputy Director.

 

Craig Beardsley

Craig Beardsley was program administrator. He retired in spring 2019. Beardsley served as co-principle investigator on NABC U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Agriculture projects and was principle investigator on Kansas National Guard projects.

 

 

Joe Fund

Joe Fund served as project manager. His experience working in state and local government positions performing managerial, team-building and sensitive communications functions allowed him to respond to a broad range of matters for NABC. His expertise in project management, as well as legislative, planning, policy analysis, and implementation of complex strategies, has been invaluable to the development and management of NABC projects.