Dr. Hank Parker is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Medical Center, Department of Microbiology and Immunology where he teaches a graduate course on biological threats to food and agriculture. He recently taught a similar course at George Mason University and served as Consultant with the Homeland Security Institute and as a Consulting Associate, Food Safety and Security, with Centaur Security Solutions.
Formerly, Dr. Parker was a senior executive with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he was Acting Assistant Administrator for homeland security and Associate Area Director for the ARS North Atlantic Area. Prior USDA assignments included Acting Director of the ARS U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory; ARS National Program Leader for Aquaculture; and Aquaculture Program Coordinator for the Cooperative State Research Service of USDA. He is the author of Agricultural Bioterrorism: A Federal Strategy to Meet the Threat, published by the National Defense University in 2002.
Before joining USDA, Dr. Parker was Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where he was a faculty member from 1979 to 1992 and Executive Director of the Northeastern Regional Aquaculture Center. Dr. Parker also served as Vice President of Pacific Sea Resources, Inc. where he co-directed an underwater archaeology project that recovered remains of a Spanish Manila galleon in the Northern Mariana Islands. In the early 1970’s he was manager of a program to develop a commercial seaweed cultivation program in the Philippines for Marine Colloids, Inc. He is a retired Captain, U.S. Naval Reserve, with nearly 23 years of naval service.
Dr. Parker received a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island, a Master’s degree in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University; a Master’s degree in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island, and a B.A. in English from Harvard University.