including the NRC’s Ocean Studies Board and the International Steering Group for the World Ocean Circulation Experiment. He is a foreign member of the Royal Society and a recipient of the American Geophysical Union’s Macelwane Award and Maurice Ewing Medal, and the American Meteorological Society’s Henry Stommel Medal.

Charles F. Draper is director of the National Research Council’s Naval Studies Board. Before joining the NRC in 1997, he was the lead mechanical engineer at S.T. Research Corporation, where he provided technical and program management support for satellite Earth station and small satellite design. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University in 1995; his doctoral research was conducted at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), where he used an atomic-force microscope to measure the nanomechanical properties of thin-film materials. In parallel with his graduate student duties, Dr. Draper was a mechanical engineer with Geo-Centers, Inc., working on-site at NRL on the development of an underwater X-ray backscattering tomography system used for the nondestructive evaluation of U.S. Navy sonar domes on surface ships.

Billy M. Williams is a senior program officer with the National Research Council’s Naval Studies Board. Prior to joining the NSB, he served in a similar capacity with the NRC’s Board on Army Science and Technology, where he led projects associated with the U.S. Army’s chemical demilitarization program. Mr. Williams retired as a global research and development director from the Dow Chemical Company in 2004 after 30 years of service. His career at Dow included directing analytical materials science and polymer fabrication laboratories in operations across the United States, Europe, and Asia. He also served as the company’s director of external science and technology programs, with responsibility for developing and securing strategic technical partnerships with leading research universities, national laboratories, and federal agencies. Mr. Williams earned an M.S. degree in organic chemistry and has completed executive education programs at Indiana University and Harvard University.