Some of you know that I spent a chunk of last month traveling around the state of Arizona meeting with other Episcopal clergy and talking about the work of writing for blogs. As a result of that series our bishop is now blogging and about 7 or so other clergy have blogs in the works. (That’s in addition to the 6 of us (lay and clergy) who were already blogging.)

One of our deacons was very interested in participating but wasn’t too keen about trying to learn the mechanics of actually creating a site, registering a domain, finding a host, etc. He is by training an epidemiologist and was interested in writing about the intersection of his scientific work and his ministry as a deacon. I saw an opening and went for it. Deacon Bill will be joining me on this blog as one of the authors. This is particularly exciting because I know just about nothing useful in the biological sciences. Having a “for real” biologist/epidemiologist working with me fills a gaping whole in the sorts of material I could post.

I asked Bill if he’d be willing to introduce himself, and he dug this bio up:

William(Bill) Martin was ordained as a deacon along with his wife, Nadine, in October, 2006. He retired from the Centers for Disease Control(CDC) and Prevention on December 31, 1998 and became a member of GSP in mid-2002.

Bill received his doctorate from the University of Utah in 1965 in medical microbiology and immunology. His professional career spans both academic medicine as well as public health and epidemiology. He held tenured positions at both UCLA School of Medicine and Tufts University School of Medicine in their Departments of Pathology, Medicine, and Microbiology and Immunology. In 1993, Bill took a position with the CDC in Atlanta where he was named Director of their Scientific Resources Program in the National Center for Infectious Diseases. This was Bill’s second tour of duty at the CDC. He was employed there in 1965 as a research scientist in the Enteric Bacteriology Unit. It was in this position that he traveled a lot to the Third World countries and saw how these people “lived”. He never forgot those experiences which are the prime reasons he is in his current ministries of helping the less fortunate persons whether they are the homeless or the immigrants trying to enter this country.