Our Team
Dr. Rachel Rosenberg Goldstein
Dr. Rachel Rosenberg Goldstein is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health in the Department of Global, Environmental, and Occupational Health. She also directs the WOW (Water quality, Outreach, and Wellness) Lab where her research focuses on improving water quality through community-engaged research and outreach. Her current projects include evaluating the microbial safety of harvested rainwater for produce irrigation, on-farm well water quality, determining the risk of exposure to pathogens and antibiotic-resistant bacteria from sanitary sewer overflows, and health risks from septic failures caused by sea-level rise. She is the co-project director of Extension and Outreach for CONSERVE: A Center of Excellence at the Nexus of Sustainable Water Reuse, Food, and Health and the Maryland Team Co-Leader for the Global FEWture Alliance. She is also an NIH Director's New Innovator 2023 Awardee. Dr. Goldstein received a PhD in Toxicology and Environmental Health and an MPH in Environmental Health from the University of Maryland, as well as a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Emily (Emmie) Woerner
Emily (Emmie) Woerner is a doctoral candidate in the Environmental Health Sciences program at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, Department of Global, Environmental, and Occupational Health (GEOH). As a member of the Water Quality, Outreach, and Wellness Laboratory, Emmie investigates the environmental and public health implications of microbial water contamination of irrigation water.
Neith Little
Neith is the urban agriculture Extension Educator for Baltimore City. She has served in this role since 2016, helping urban farmers learn what they need to better achieve their goals through one-on-one technical assistance, workshops, field days, written resources, and applied research.
Jennifer M. Egan, PG, PhD
Program Manager, University of Maryland Environmental Finance Center (EFC) and Adjunct Professor, University of Delaware, Department of Applied Economics and Statistics (UD APEC).
Guy Kilpatric
Guy Kilpatric has been manager of Terp Farm since 2014 and has been farming since his college years as far back as 2007. Originally from Maryland, Guy has worked on farms in Southern Maryland, the Central Coast of California, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Northern Massachusetts, and Washington D.C. He studied literature and environmental studies at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and received a Certificate in Ecological Horticulture from the Center for Agroecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In his role at Terp Farm, Guy has mentored dozens of students on their career path to becoming farmers.
Shirley Micallef
Dr. Shirley Micallef is a Professor in microbial ecology and safety of fruit and vegetables at the University of Maryland in College Park. Her work on food safety focuses on human pathogen-plant interactions using Salmonella-tomato and E. coli O157:H7-lettuce systems.
In controlled environments, her group is investigating plant traits and environmental conditions that modulate the enteric pathogen-plant association, while also assessing plant responses and resilience to abiotic stresses and impact on extranutritional quality of crops.
She also conducts research that evaluates agricultural practices that affect enteric pathogen dispersal onto crops in field environments. She has led several studies that assessed surface and reclaimed water as reservoirs for human pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and adopted plant microbiome analyses to map the influence of irrigation on crop microbiota.
Amanda Rockler
Amanda Rockler (arockler@umd.edu) is a Regional Watershed Restoration Specialist with the Maryland Sea Grant Extension Program. She received her Bachelor's in Environmental and Ecological Biology from the University of Colorado @ Boulder, and her Masters from George Washington University in Sustainable Landscape Design. Amanda works with local governments, non-profits, residents, and other entities to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay.
Dr. Brienna Anderson-Coughlin
Dr. Brienna Anderson-Coughlin is a postdoctoral associate in the University of Maryland, School of Public Health, Department of Global, Environmental, and Occupational Health (GEOH) where she focuses her research on the microbial communities of the natural and built environments. Dr. Anderson-Coughlin earned her BS in Food Science and PhD in Animal and Food Sciences at the University of Delaware where her initial research focused on microbial water quality and transitioned to wastewater-based epidemiology during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kevin Tarwa
Alan Gutierrez
Farmer Chippy
Hey, I’m Farmer Chippy! My dream was to create an AgriHood, in the City of Baltimore that spreads love, supports the community, and brings healthy food to surrounding cities!
As a Biomedical Field Service Engineer, my travels took me to amazing places with fun people and great food. But, the daily experiences in hospitals, clinics and urgent care facilities, continued to be disturbing.
As much as I was interested in being part of a team that provides solutions to the healthcare industry, I had a burning desire to explore options that promoted a healthier quality of life for our youngest citizens.
Throughout my career, I have worked to promote a Preventative Healthcare solution to improve my community. One of the Physicians I worked closely with, while servicing his surgical microscope, said to me “the greatest hindrance to clinical science is the inability for clinicians to embrace innovations that brings cleaner foods to patients.”
I hope to be the (Engineer/Farmer) that popularizes the benefits of conventional medicine while exploring potential new research that brings Cleaner Greener Foods closer to lesser fortunate communities in Baltimore.