Gerard J. Fitzgerald received his Ph.D. in History and Policy from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003 where he took part in a National Science Foundation graduate-training program in cold war science and technology studies. From 2003-2005 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition he was also a lecturer and visiting assistant professor in the department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania from 2002-2006 and also a fellow in residence at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. He is currently finishing his first book, a history of civilian and military research on airborne disease prevention and airborne biological weapons production in the United States between 1930 and 1970. In the past few years he has lectured far and wide on the origins of the American biological weapons program and its relationship to civilian public health practice. He has also begun work on a new book on the sensory, medical, and architectural history of textile mill life and industrialization in the New South.