Former government scientist with more than 40 years of experience in research and research management positions at EPA and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Research Triangle Park (RTP), NC, as well as private sector experience as Chief Scientist/Chief Scientific Officer at Integrated Laboratory Systems (ILS), Inc., RTP and a consultant at Michael Waters Consulting USA. His research interests have centered on the evaluation of chemically induced mutations and altered molecular expression in the etiology of cancer and genetic disease. More recently he has studied COVID-19 and nucleoside analog antiviral agents. He is a widely published scientist with well over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, numerous book chapters, books, and technical reports. He co-edited Mutation Research-Reviews for more than 25 years and has held adjunct professorships at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and Duke University. He served as President of the Environmental Mutagen Society (now Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society) and of the 7000-member International Association of Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Societies. National and international scientific databases developed under his direction and several of his publications are recognized as important contributions that have significantly impacted the fields of genetic toxicology, carcinogenesis research, toxicogenomics, and risk assessment. Currently writing, editing and independently consulting in toxicology and toxicogenomics, he is Chief Scientist at Michael Waters Consulting USA, Hillsborough, NC. At ILS for seven years, he served as Chief Scientist/Chief Scientific Officer reporting directly to the President and CEO of this contract research organization with full responsibility for the scientific direction, integrity and scientific products of the company of 160 employees in RTP and Athens, Georgia. Prior to that, at NIEHS for six years, he served as Assistant Director of the National Center for Toxicogenomics, responsible for a major initiative to develop the Chemical Effects in Biological Systems (CEBS) knowledgebase. CEBS is utilized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as the repository for all National Toxicology Program data. It is also used by academic, industrial, and international scientific communities as a data repository and analytical toolset for the interpretation of toxicogenomics data. At NIEHS he also served on the NIH Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Roadmap Working Group, the 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 at EPA he performed and directed research in cellular pathology, biochemistry, and genetic toxicology in various capacities including Team Leader, Branch Chief, and Division Director in RTP, NC. He served EPA as an Associate/Assistant Laboratory Director with full 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. While at EPA he also developed the EPA/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Genetic Activity Profile (GAP) Database which has formed the basis for the use of short-term tests in the evaluation of presumptive human carcinogens by the IARC; he also served on more than twenty IARC Monograph Working Groups and IARC Scientific Committees.