Events - Event View

Speaker Biographies

Azim Chowdhury practices food, tobacco, and e-vapor law in the Washington, DC, office of Keller and Heckman LLP. He advises domestic and foreign corporations in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and international regulatory compliance. In particular, he has developed expertise in tobacco product regulation under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act and spearheaded the tobacco and e-vapor practice at Keller and Heckman. He also frequently contributes to the Tobacco Reporter and the Food and Drug Law Institute’s (FDLI) Update magazine. He edited and coauthored FDLI’s tobacco regulation manuals, and he previously served on the editorial advisory board of the Food and Drug Law Journal. Before entering private practice, he served as a judicial law clerk on the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland. Mr. Chowdhury received a B.A. and B.S. from Johns Hopkins University, an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, and a J.D., cum laude, from the University of Maryland School of Law.

Gregory Conley is the president of the American Vaping Association (AVA), a nonprofit organization that champions regulatory policies toward vapor products designed to maximize the effectiveness of vaping for quitting smoking. He is one of the most prominent defenders of vaping in the United States. In addition to his work with the AVA, Mr. Conley is an attorney and a consultant on vaping legislative and regulatory issues. He began working on vaping issues in 2010 after quitting smoking with a vapor product while in law school. He served as the pro bono legislative director for the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association from 2011 to 2014.

Sally Satel is a resident scholar at AEI and the staff psychiatrist at Partners in Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation Counseling. Dr. Satel was an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University from 1988 to 1993. From 1993 to 1994, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow with the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. She has written widely in academic journals on topics in psychiatry and medicine and has published articles on cultural aspects of medicine and science in numerous magazines and journals. Her essays have appeared in the 2003 and 2008 editions of “Best American Science Writing.” She has testified before Congress on veterans’ mental health and disability, federal funding for mental health, and substance abuse. Dr. Satel is author of “Drug Treatment: The Case for Coercion” (AEI Press, 1999) and “PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine” (Basic Books, 2001). She is the coauthor of “One Nation Under Therapy” (St. Martin’s Press, 2005) and “The Health Disparity Myth” (AEI Press, 2006) and editor of “When Altruism Isn’t Enough: The Case for Compensating Organ Donors” (AEI Press, 2009). She most recently coauthored “Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience” (Basic Books, 2013).

Saul Shiffman is a research professor of clinical and health psychology, psychiatry, pharmaceutical sciences, and clinical translational science at the University of Pittsburgh. He also serves as senior scientific adviser at Pinney Associates, which consults Reynolds American on smoking cessation and tobacco harm-reduction strategies and products, including vapor products. Dr. Shiffman earned his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he began conducting behavioral research on nicotine and tobacco in 1973. Since then, he has published nearly 400 scientific papers on topics including smoking patterns, nicotine dependence, smoking cessation, and harm reduction. He was awarded the Ovid Ferno Clinical Research Award by the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in 2010 and the Research to Practice Award by the Society for Behavioral Medicine in 2013. Dr. Shiffman has been designated a fellow of multiple scientific societies and has served on advisory panels to the National Institutes of Health and several nongovernmental organizations.

Stan Veuger is a resident scholar at AEI, where his research is in political economy and public finance. He is also the editor of AEI Economic Perspectives. In the fall of 2016, he was a visiting lecturer of economics at Harvard University. Dr. Veuger’s research has been published in leading academic and professional journals, including the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He is the editor, with Michael Strain, of “Economic Freedom and Human Flourishing: Perspectives from Political Philosophy” (AEI Press, 2016). He also writes frequently for general audiences on economics, politics, and popular culture. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Los Angeles Times, The National Interest, The New York Times, and USA Today, among others. Dr. Veuger serves as a board member of the Altius Society and as the chairman of the Washington, DC, chapter of the Netherland-America Foundation. He received a Ph.D. and an A.M. in economics from Harvard and an M.Sc. in economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He completed his undergraduate education at Utrecht University and Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Alan D. Viard is a resident scholar at AEI, where he studies federal tax and budget policy. Before joining AEI, he was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and an assistant professor of economics at Ohio State University. He has also been a visiting scholar at the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis, a senior economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, and a staff economist at the Joint Committee on Taxation of the US Congress. While at AEI, he has also taught public finance at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute. Earlier in his career, Dr. Viard spent time in Japan as a visiting scholar at Osaka University’s Institute of Social and Economic Research. He is a frequent contributor to AEI’s On the Margin column in Tax Notes and was nominated for Tax Notes’ 2009 Tax Person of the Year. He has testified before Congress, and his work has been featured in a wide range of publications. He is the coauthor of “Progressive Consumption Taxation: The X Tax Revisited” (AEI Press, 2012) and “The Real Tax Burden: Beyond Dollars and Cents” (AEI Press, 2011) and the editor of “Tax Policy Lessons from the 2000s” (AEI Press, 2009).