National Academies Press: OpenBook

The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions (2003)

Chapter: Appendix A: Committee Biosketches

« Previous: References
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×

Appendixes

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×
This page in the original is blank.
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×

A
Committee Biosketches

Dr. Mahlon C. Kennicutt II, Chair, is director of the Geochemical and Environmental Research Group (GERG), adjunct professor of oceanography, member of the toxicology faculty, and team leader of the Sustainable Coastal Margins Program (SCMP) at Texas A&M University. Dr. Kennicutt earned his Ph.D. in oceanography in 1980 from Texas A&M University. His research interests include environmental monitoring; fate and effects of contaminants; environmental impacts of offshore energy exploration and exploitation; coordination of the social and physical sciences to address environmental issues; and all aspects of sustainable development of coastal margins. He is currently an ex officio member of the Polar Research Board and is the U.S. delegate to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. He previously served on the PRB’s Committee to Review NASA’s Polar Geophysical Data Sets and is serving on the current committee Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska’s North Slope. Dr. Kennicutt is a member of various professional organizations including the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography.

Dr. Brenda Ballachey is a research physiologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage, Alaska. Dr. Ballachey earned her Ph.D. in animal breeding and genetics from Oregon State University in 1985. Her areas of expertise are marine mammals (population status and indexes of condition); sea otters (biochemical, physiological, population and ecological effects of oil exposure); environmental toxicology; and biomarkers of

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×

contaminant exposure. Dr. Ballachey brings to the committee her long-term experience as a project leader for population status and sea otter oil spill studies and as a principal investigator on the Nearshore Vertebrate Predator project, an ecosystem approach to examining the recovery of the coastal marine environment in Prince William Sound, Alaska, after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Dr. Joan Braddock is a professor of microbiology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Dr. Braddock earned her Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Her research includes extensive work on biodegradation of oil in intertidal and subtidal marine sediments following the Exxon Valdez oil spill; evaluation of bioremediation as a treatment technology following the Exxon Valdez oil spill; bioremediation effectiveness in Arctic and subarctic terrestrial ecosystems; natural attentuation of contaminants in cold climates; the effect of sediments on bioavailability of petroleum hydrocarbons for microbial degradation; and microbial degradation of chlorinated and unchlorinated hydrocarbons in groundwater.

Dr. Akhil Datta-Gupta is an associate professor and holder of Robert L. Adams Professorship in Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M U. in College Station. He has a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, he worked with BP Exploration at Alaska and also at the BP Research and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has extensive experience in subsurface characterization and fluid flow modeling, both for oil recovery and environmental remediation. His research interests include high-resolution numerical schemes for reservoir simulation; geostatistics and stochastic reservoir characterization; modeling and scale-up of enhanced oil recovery; environmental remediation and contaminant transport. He is a distinguished member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and currently serves on the NRC’s Polar Research Board.

Dr. Deborah French McCay is a principal at Applied Science Associates, Inc. Dr. French earned her Ph.D. in biological oceanography in 1984 from the University of Rhode Island. Her research interests include quantitative assessments and modeling of aquatic ecosystems to assess environmental impact and damage, especially in regards to response to pollutants, including oil. She is an expert in modeling oil fates and effects, toxicity, exposure to bioaccumulation of pollutants by biota, along with the effects of this contamination. Her models have been used for impact, risk, and natural resource damage assessments, as well as for studies of

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×

biological systems. Her expert testimony has been provided in hearings regarding environmental risk and impact assessments.

Dr. Jerry Neff is a senior research leader at the Battelle Memorial Institute. Dr. Neff earned his Ph.D. in zoology in 1967 from Duke University. He has performed extensive research for the oil industry and the U.S. federal government on the aquatic environmental fate and effects of heavy metals and petroleum hydrocarbons from offshore drilling and production operations, clean ballast water discharges from tankers, and from major oil spills, including the Esso Bayway crude oil spill in the Neches River, the Arthur Kill, New Jersey diesel spill, Amoco Cadiz crude oil spill in France, the Exxon Valdez crude oil spill in Alaska, the Newton Lake, Illinois, pipeline break and oil spill, the Haven oil spill off Genoa, Italy, the Trecate oil spill in rice fields north of Milan, Italy, and the Seki oil spill in the United Arab Emirates. He has been a member of three review panels of the National Research Council, the first dealing with Fate and Effects of Drilling Mud and Cuttings in the Marine Environment and the second dealing with marine oil spills. The third was an assessment of marine environmental monitoring in the Southern California Bight.

Dr. James Payne is the president of Payne Environmental Consultants, Inc. Dr. Payne earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1974 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he was a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution postdoctoral scholar from 1974 to 1975. Payne Environmental Consultants, Inc., specializes in oil and chemical pollution studies for government and industry. Over the 28 years of his professional career, Dr. Payne has been involved in numerous projects dealing with marine- and water-pollution issues, including laboratory and flow-through wave-tank studies of oil weathering behavior in Arctic and subarctic waters. He has also supported NOAA natural resource damage assessment efforts after the Exxon Valdez, American Trader, Kuroshima, and New Carissa oil spills. Dr. Payne contributed background chapters for the 1985 NRC publication Oil in the Sea–Inputs, Fates, and Effects and he was a member of the NRC Ocean Science Board committees dealing with the Effectiveness of Oil Spill Dispersants (1985-1988) and Spills of Emulsified Fuels (2001).

Dr. James P. Ray is a manager of environmental ecology and response at Shell Global Solutions, Inc. Dr. Ray earned his Ph.D. in biological oceanography in 1974 from Texas A&M University. His research interests include petroleum industry marine ecological research on fate and effects contaminants in the marine environment and related technology, and he is a well-known inputs expert. Dr. Ray was previously a member of the NRC Committee to Review Fate and Effects of Drilling Fluids in the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×

Marine Environment; the Committee on Arctic Marine Sciences; and Managing Troubled Waters: The Role of Marine Environmental Monitoring. He also served on the NRC steering group for “Planning a Systems Assessment of Marine Environmental Monitoring.”

Dr. Bill Sackinger is the president and CEO of OBELISK Hydrocarbons, Ltd., in Fairbanks, Alaska. Dr. Sackinger earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1969. His research interests include sea ice dynamics; naturally induced stresses in sea ice sheets near grounded obstacles; theoretical analysis of artificially formed sea spray ice-freezing kinetics; and research on sea ice failure stresses. Dr. Sackinger has provided consulting and advisory experience to several state, federal, and international agencies, including the State of Alaska, U.S. Department of Energy, and the Japan National Oil Corporation. He has also provided consultation for the NRC’s Polar Research Board on various occasions since 1974.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×
Page 115
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×
Page 116
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×
Page 117
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×
Page 118
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×
Page 119
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biosketches." National Research Council. 2003. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10643.
×
Page 120
Next: Appendix B: OSRI Bylaws »
The Oil Spill Recovery Institute: Past, Present, and Future Directions Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $56.00 Buy Ebook | $44.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!

As a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), and within that legislation, the Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI) was born. This report assesses the strength and weaknesses of this research program, with emphasis on whether the activities supported to date address the OSRI mission, whether the processes used are sound, and whether the research and technology development projects are of high quality

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!