CEO, ExpedMed Director,
Expedition Medicine Conference
Emergency Physician, St. Simons Island, GA

Dr. Bledsoe is a Board Certified Emergency Medicine physician and the founder and CEO of ExpedMed. After completing medical school and residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Dr. Bledsoe spent five years on faculty in the Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine completing a two-year fellowship in International Emergency Medicine and a Masters in Public Health (MPH) from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2005, he received the “Teacher of the Year” award from the Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Bledsoe has extensive experience in international travel having visited over 40 countries. His international medical experience includes serving as a field physician in Honduras, teaching disaster preparedness in Tanzania, leading a nutritional survey among the Beja tribe in northeast Sudan, working as a medical consultant in Beijing, China, and acting as the medical officer for ships in both Antarctica and the Arctic.

In addition to his clinical duties, Dr. Bledsoe has been an instructor and medical consultant for the United States Secret Service. He was the personal physician to former President Bill Clinton during Clinton’s tour of Africa in September 2002, and served in Uganda and Senegal on the advance team of President George W. Bush when the President visited the African continent in July of 2003.

Dr. Bledsoe’s research has been published in many prestigious medical journals including the Journal of Trauma, Prehospital & Disaster Medicine, Southern Medical Journal, Journal of Emergency Medicine, Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, Pediatric Emergency Care, and The Journal of Sports Science and Medicine. His current projects include being the chief editor of a textbook entitled Expedition and Wilderness Medicine that will be published by Cambridge University Press in the spring of 2008.  He is a frequent public speaker and has been interviewed by numerous regional and national media outlets including The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Baltimore Sun, The Naperville Sun, Fort Worth Weekly, Austin-American Statesman, Cincinnati Magazine, El Mundo, ESPN the Magazine, USA Today, FOX 5 New York City, and 60 Minutes.

When not working overseas, Dr. Bledsoe lives and works on Saint Simons Island, Georgia.  In addition to his medical practice, Dr. Bledsoe is a private pilot, a scuba diver, a student in Brazilian jiu jitsu, and a member of The Explorers Club.

Program Manager for Biodefense and
Mass Casuality Care
Defense Advanced Research
Project Agency, Bethesda, MD

Dr. Michael Callahan is a Program Manager for Biodefense and Mass-Casualty Care at the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and an Associate Physician at the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Current wilderness medicine activities include oversight of clinical research programs to protect U.S. military personnel during sustained, extreme operations, including projects in Rapid Altitude Acclimatization and Immune Hardening. Before joining DARPA, Dr Callahan was principal investigator for the S.E. Asian Polyvalent Antivenin Trial in Na Trang, Vietnam. He maintains disaster medicine billets with two international disaster response organizations.

Eddie Frank, Founder & President,
Tusker Trail

Eddie Frank is an American born and raised in Africa. He founded Tusker Trail in 1977. Since then he has traveled through all but 3 of the countries on the African continent. Over the past 32 years he has built Tusker Trail into one of the leading adventure companies in the travel industry.

Eddie, as one of the world’s foremost Kilimanjaro experts, has developed Tusker Trail’s reputation as the most professional climbing company on Kilimanjaro. In his 32 years since founding Tusker Trail, he has crossed the Sahara Desert 34 times, and has climbed Kilimanjaro 36 times. He is a Wilderness First Responder and member of the Wilderness Medical Society. Specializing in high altitude, he has designed a highly specialized high altitude medical training course which he personally conducts each year with Tusker Trail’s 20 Tanzanian mountain guides.

Currently he serves on the board of directors of the non-profit Uhuru Foundation, and the Uhuru Rural Bank, a new micro finance bank whose main mission is to alleviate poverty amongst villages in the rural Kilimanjaro region. He has also founded Doctors Out of Children (D.O.C), which plans to educate the children of Tusker Trail’s guides, and turn them into doctors, who will ultimately provide much needed medical care in their communities.

Associate Professor of Medicine
Associate Residency Program Director
Division of Emergency Medicine
University of Washington School of Medicine,
Seattle, WA

Dr. Townes received his medical degree from the University of Massachusetts and completed his internship and residency in Emergency Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is Board Certified in Emergency Medicine. Dr. Townes completed a fellowship in International Emergency Medicine, earning a Master's Degree in Public Health, and has also attended the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the University of London.

Dr. Townes has worked in a variety of wilderness and international settings including Alaska, Antarctica, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Russia, the West Indies, and Yosemite National Park. In addition to his academic duties, he has been a physician volunteer for the National Ski Patrol, the search and rescue team at Yosemite National Park, and the Indian Health Service, and has served as the Medical Director for the Heartland AIDS Ride (2001), the Subaru Primal Quest Expedition Length Adventure Race (2002, 2003, 2004), and the Coastal Challenge (2005, 2006).

As a former member of the Board of Directors for the Wilderness Medical Society, Dr. Townes is a frequent speaker and author in the areas of Wilderness and Expedition medicine. He is currently an Associate Professor and the Associate Residency Program Director in the Division of Emergency Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington.