Meet Megan Trapp and Greg Peterson
The University Research Compliance Office, or URCO, welcomes Megan Trapp and Greg Peterson. Megan is our new Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, or IACUC, Research Compliance Coordinator. Greg serves as the Institutional Biosafety Committee, or IBC, Compliance Program Manager.
Megan Trapp received a bachelor’s degree in animal sciences and industry with an equine certificate from Kansas State University. Megan has always had a passion for animals. Her parents operated a mixed practice veterinary clinic in rural Kansas where she gained a vast array of knowledge into the world of humane animal care. During college, Megan worked at the K-State Veterinary Health Center. Upon completion of her education, she worked at the Rabies Laboratory, where she was involved with diagnostic testing of brain tissue from suspect animals and the animal serology rabies titer test for travel. She also worked at the Biosecurity Research Institute as a biocontainment laboratory coordinator. In that position, Megan was involved with all aspects of supporting research, from the beginning planning stages to the final gas decontamination of spaces after projects had been completed.
After working at the BRI for eight years, Megan is excited to join URCO and expand the number of researchers she will be working with. She is an integral part of the IACUC, which is committed to ensuring that all institutional animal use is responsible and humane. She understands the importance of animal research and the unique professional, ethical, and moral obligations it requires. Megan is committed to creating an open educational partnership with all investigators and their respected research teams to confirm accurate and consistent protocol development. She is also working to create a post-approval monitoring, or PAM, program to ensure the manner in which the committee understood and approved a protocol is consistent with the way the experimental procedures are being performed. Continual IACUC oversight of animal activities is required by federal laws, regulations, and policies that we must comply with. The PAM program will help increase communication and understanding of those laws, regulations, and policies. Please call Megan with any questions and feel free to invite her out to your unit or lab — she is happy to consult in person.
Greg Peterson was hired in May 2018. He received his Ph.D. in pathobiology from the K-State College of Veterinary Medicine in 2011, then served as a microbiologist in the Laboratory Preparedness program at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. At KDHE, he worked in the BSL-3 diagnostic laboratory on a variety of select agents and managed the Pulse Net laboratory, which focused on the identification of foodborne disease clusters in Kansas and the U.S. He later worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kansas. Most recently, he served as a research assistant professor at the Biosecurity Research Institute, where he led classes in biosafety and biosecurity for graduate students participating in BSL-3Ag research.
In his current position, Greg will help URCO support K-State’s tradition of conducting cutting-edge research in a safe and compliant manner. He is planning to enhance K-State’s culture of biosafety by further developing the network of biosafety practitioners operating in the sciences to provide a process of continuing improvement. As the NBAF and the neighboring biotechnology industries in the Animal Health Corridor begin to scale up operations, they will be looking to K-State for collaborators as well as to produce the next generation of young scientists. These companies will benefit greatly from the biosafety and compliance practices that K-State values. Greg is excited to be in this crucial role and looks forward to further serving his home state of Kansas and his alma mater.
