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Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2003. A Review of the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10697.
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Committee Biographies

John Till, PhD (Chair), president, Risk Assessment Corporation. Dr. Till is a recognized authority in dose reconstruction and communication efforts in radiological assessment, dose reconstruction, and risk analysis. Dr. Till was a member of the IOM committee that produced the year 2000 National Academies report The Five Series Study: Mortality of Military Participants in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Tests. He is the 1995 recipient of the E. O. Lawrence Award in Environmental Science and Technology. He has chaired a number of committees and task groups on issues related to radiation dosimetry. He was responsible for the dosimetry estimates in a major University of Utah epidemiological dose reconstruction project and was chairman of the technical steering panel that directed the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project. Dr. Till’s scientific achievements include more than 150 publications.

Harold L. Beck, BS, retired director of the Environmental Sciences Division of the Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Measurements Laboratory (EML) in New York City. Mr. Beck previously served as director of the EML Instrumentation Division and as acting deputy director of the laboratory. Mr. Beck received his BS from the University of Miami summa cum laude and did graduate work in physics and mathematics at Cornell University from 1960 to 1962. He is the author or coauthor of over 100 publications in radiation physics, radiation protection, environmental radiation, dosimetry, and instrumentation. His development of the scientific approach to reconstructing fallout doses to the US population from aboveground nuclear-weapons tests in Nevada earned him the DOE Meritorious Service Award in 1988, the second-highest award in the department. He is a mem

Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2003. A Review of the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10697.
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ber of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Nuclear Society, and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), and he is a fellow of the Health Physics Society. Mr. Beck served as the scientific vice president of the NCRP for radiation measurement and dosimetry in 1996-2002. He also served as a member of BRER’s Committee on Dosimetry for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation.

William J. Brady, BS, was former Principal Health Physicist, Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Co., Inc. (REECo), a subsidiary of EG&G Inc., at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). For 35 years he held health physics and technical positions and was director of the Rad Safe Division Reactor Branch and director of the Laboratory Branch. He wrote the first NTS monitoring manual (1956) and emergency monitoring manual (1957), and developed the personnel radiation dosimeter worn at the NTS for 26 years. In 1957 he started collecting US dosimetry records for nuclear testing and put them into a computerized Master File during 1966–1969. Those records were the basis of research used by the Nuclear Test Personnel Review (NTPR) program of the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA). He continued assisting DNA as a dosimetry expert until retirement in 1991 and wrote several histories of underground testing. Mr. Brady is a past scientific advisor of the National Association of Atomic Veterans. In 1988, he received the Department of Energy’s highest department commendation, the Award of Excellence, “In recognition of significant contributions to radiological safety in support of the weapons testing program at the Nevada Test Site.” He has served on two prior NRC committees, one on ionizing-radiation dosimetry and the other on film-badge dosimetry in atmospheric tests.

Thomas Gesell, PhD, is professor of health physics, director of the Technical Safety Office, and director of the Environmental Monitoring Program at Idaho State University. He has worked in multiple capacities for the DOE Idaho Operations Office, including deputy assistant manager for Nuclear Programs, and director of the Radiological and Environmental Sciences Laboratory on the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory site. Dr. Gesell was a faculty member of the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston for 10 years. Dr. Gesell is a member of several committees and professional organizations, including the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Radiation Advisory Committee and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP). He chaired committees whose work led to three publications of the NCRP and served on one previous committee of the National Research Council. He is a fellow of the Health Physics Society and was recently elected to its Board of Directors. Dr. Gesell was also a consultant to the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Dr. Gesell was coauthor of Environmental Radioactivity from Natural, Industrial and Military Sources (1997) with Merril Eisenbud.

Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2003. A Review of the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10697.
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David G. Hoel, PhD, Distinguished University Professor, Department of Biometry and Epidemiology at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston. Dr. Hoel earned his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research specialties include environmental causes of cancer, especially ionizing radiation; risk-assessment models; statistical inference, particularly sequential procedures; statistical and mathematical applications in biology and medicine; epidemiology; and radiation health effects. Dr. Hoel was formerly an associate director of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Hiroshima, Japan. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, and has served on numerous national committees, including committees of the National Research Council.

David G. Kocher, PhD, senior scientist at SENES Oak Ridge, Inc., Center for Risk Analysis, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He earned his PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970. He joined the research staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in 1971, where he worked as an environmental health physicist from 1976 to 2000. His principal research activities at ORNL involved the development and implementation of models and databases for estimating radiation doses to the public from exposure to radionuclides in the environment; the results of this work have been widely used in assessing radiological effects of releases from operating nuclear facilities and from disposal of radioactive waste. An important focus of his work has involved evaluations of environmental dose-assessment models for regulatory and decision-making purposes. He served as a member of several technical advisory groups for the Department of Energy, the Science Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the International Atomic Energy Agency in environmental radiological assessment and management of radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes, and he served on the National Research Council’s Committee on Evaluation of EPA Guidelines for Exposure to Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials. In 1999, he was elected to membership in the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), and he has served on NCRP scientific committees on risk-based classification of radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes, performance assessment for disposal of low-level radioactive waste, and risk management analysis for decommissioned sites. He has lectured widely in external and internal dosimetry, environmental radiological assessments, radioactive-waste management, and laws and regulations addressing public exposures to radionuclides and hazardous chemicals in the environment. He joined SENES Oak Ridge, Inc., in December 2000. His activities at SENES have included development of the radiation effectiveness factors (REFs) used in the compensation program for sick workers at Department of Energy facilities and participation in the dose reconstruction for historical releases at Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2003. A Review of the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10697.
×

Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD, Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia, where he is also director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics. Dr. Moreno received his bachelor’s degree from Hofstra University in 1973, with highest honors in philosophy and psychology. He was a University Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, receiving his doctorate in philosophy in 1977, and was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in cooperation with the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. In 1998, he received an honorary doctorate from Hofstra. Dr. Moreno is a member of the Board on Health Sciences Policy of the Institute of Medicine and of the Council on Accreditation of the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs. He is president-elect of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He was a member of the National Human Research Protection Advisory Committee, a senior consultant for the former National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and has advised the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. During 1994-1995, he was senior policy and research analyst for the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. He is also a bioethics adviser for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Genomics Collaborative, Inc., a faculty affiliate at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, and a Fellow of the Hastings Center and the New York Academy of Medicine. His book Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans was published by Routledge in 2001. Dr. Moreno has also published around 200 papers and book chapters and is a member of several editorial boards.

Clarice Weinberg, PhD, chief, Biostatistics Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and expert in biostatistics. Dr. Weinberg served on the IOM committee that produced the year 2000 National Academies report The Five Series Study: Mortality of Military Participants in U.S. Nuclear Weapons Tests. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and former editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and she serves on the editorial boards of Epidemiology and Environmental Health Perspectives.

Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2003. A Review of the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10697.
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Page 381
Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2003. A Review of the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10697.
×
Page 382
Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2003. A Review of the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10697.
×
Page 383
Suggested Citation:"Committee Biographies." National Research Council. 2003. A Review of the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10697.
×
Page 384
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From 1945 through 1962, the US atmospheric nuclear weapons testing program involved hundreds of thousands of military and civilian personnel, and some of them were exposed to ionizing radiation. Veterans' groups have since been concerned that their members' health was affected by radiation exposure associated with participation in nuclear tests and have pressured Congress for disability compensation. Several pieces of legislation have been passed to compensate both military and civilian personnel for such health effects. Veterans' concerns about the accuracy of reconstructed doses prompted Congress to have the General Accounting Office (GAO) review the dose reconstruction program used to estimate exposure. The GAO study concluded that dose reconstruction is a valid method of estimating radiation dose and could be used as the basis of compensation. It also recommended an independent review of the dose reconstruction program. The result of that recommendation was a congressional mandate that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a part of the Department of Defense, ask the National Research Council to conduct an independent review of the dose reconstruction program. In response to that request, the National Research Council established the Committee to Review the Dose Reconstruction Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in the Board on Radiation Effects Research (BRER).

The committee randomly selected sample records of doses that had been reconstructed by DTRA and carefully evaluated them. The committee's report describes its findings and provides responses to many of the questions that have been raised by the veterans.

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