The State Hygienic Laboratory announced on May 21 that Lt. Col. Wade Aldous, Ph.D., has accepted the position of director of the agency’s Disease Control Division. Aldous is Chief of Microbiology for the U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School in San Antonio, Texas. He is expected to join the Hygienic Lab in July after fulfilling his military obligations.

“Dr. Aldous has a strong record in laboratory training and education,” said Hygienic Lab Director Christopher Atchison. “He has a wealth of teaching, research, project management and publication experience that he brings to the Iowa public health and environmental laboratory.”

Aldous has more than 14 years of global clinical microbiology experience. Previously, Aldous served as the Medical Director of Microbiology at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, and Chief of the Microbiology Division at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. His work with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases includes his current duties as laboratory trainer and a three-year stint as Laboratory Training Director for the Cooperative Threat Reduction in the Republic of Georgia, where he provided lectures and training labs for identification of extremely dangerous pathogens.

On a year’s deployment in Iraq, he served as the Theater Lab Consultant providing technical advice on staffing, equipment and testing support for nine different military clinical laboratories spread across the country.

Aldous earned his doctoral degree in biology/microbiology at the University of Alabama and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in clinical microbiology at the University of Utah.