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Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version) (2010)

Chapter: Brief Biographies of Committee Members

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Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
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Brief Biographies of Committee Members

Albert Carnesale is University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) chancellor emeritus and holds professorial appointments in UCLA’s School of Public Affairs and Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. His research currently focuses on issues in international affairs and security and in higher education. Dr. Carnesale served as chancellor of UCLA from July 1, 1997 to June 30, 2006. He is the author or co-author of six books and more than 100 scholarly articles on a wide range of subjects, including the control of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, international energy issues, the effects of technological change on foreign and defense policy, and challenges and opportunities facing higher education. Prior to assuming the chancellorship of UCLA in 1997, Dr. Carnesale was at Harvard University for 23 years, serving as provost of the university and academic dean and dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he also held the Lucius N. Littauer Professorship of Public Policy and Administration. His earlier career included positions in the private sector and in government. Dr. Carnesale has represented the United States government in high-level negotiations on defense and energy issues (including the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, SALT I). He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. degree in nuclear engineering, has been awarded three honorary doctorate degrees, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.


Marvin Adams is professor of Nuclear Engineering, associate vice president for research, and director, Institute for National Security Education and Research, at Texas A&M University. He worked at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant (a TVA power plant) and its support office for approximately 2.5 years before entering graduate school at the University of Michigan. There he began working on computational methods, focusing on problems involving particle transport. This effort continued through 5.5 years as a code developer in the secondary-design division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and it has continued and broadened during 15 years on the faculty at Texas A&M University. In recent years he has focused on efficient large-scale coupled-physics simulations and on assessing the predictive capability of such simulations. Dr. Adams has served on panels and committees that have reviewed and advised the NNSA labs and DOE on matters including Stockpile Stewardship and the role of Advanced Scientific Computing in the weapons program. He is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society. Dr. Adams received a B.S. degree from Mississippi State University, and M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, all in nuclear engineering.


R. Stephen Berry is the James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Chicago and holds appointments in the college, the James Franck Institute, and

Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
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the Department of Chemistry. He has also held an appointment in the School of Public Policy Studies at the university. He has held a number of positions including visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen, the Université de Paris-Sud, and Oxford University, where he was the Newton-Abraham Professor in 1986. He spent 1994 at the Freie Universität Berlin as an awardee of the Humboldt Prize. In 1983 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1997, he received the Heyrovsky Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences. One aspect of his scientific research has been theoretical, in areas of finite-time thermodynamics, atomic collisions, atomic and molecular clusters and chaos, topographies and dynamics of complex potential surfaces, clusters and proteins. Another facet has been experimental, involving studies of negative ions, chemical reactions, detection of transient molecular species, photoionization and other laser-matter interactions. He has also worked in matters of scientific ethics and of some aspects of national security. His current scientific interests include the dynamics of atomic and molecular clusters, the basis of "guided" protein folding and other "structure-seeking" processes, and the thermodynamics of time-constrained processes and the efficient use of energy. He attended Harvard University where he received his A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry.


Sue B. Clark is professor and chair of the Chemistry Department at Washington State University (WSU). Her current research focuses on the environmental chemistry of plutonium and other actinides, and development of radioanalytical methods to measure actinide elements in environmental samples. Prior to joining WSU in 1996, she was an assistant research ecologist at the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, and senior scientist at Westinghouse Savannah River Company's Savannah River Technology Center (1989-1992). Dr. Clark has served as a consultant to the Nuclear Energy Agency of France, the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute, and the Battelle Memorial Institute and several committees of the National Research Council. Dr. Clark has received several awards, including the Westinghouse Professorship (2000 to present), Ford Lecturer at Minnesota State University, the Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, the Young Faculty Achievement Award in the College of Sciences at WSU. She is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. Dr. Clark received her Ph.D. degree in inorganic and radiochemistry from Florida State University. She has served on several National Research Council committees, and she currently serves on its Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.


Jay C. Davis is president of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. Previously, Dr. Davis was a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he served as the first national security fellow at the Center for Global Security Research. He previously served as the founding director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) of the United States Department of Defense (DOD). His current interests are homeland defense, nuclear and biological forensics, applications of accelerator technologies to multi-disciplinary research, counterforce technologies, and strategic planning and management of change in organizations. Dr. Davis has over 80 publications on research in nuclear physics, nuclear instrumentation, plasma physics, accelerator design and technology, nuclear analytical techniques and analytical methods, and treaty verification technologies. He also holds patents on spectrometer technologies and methods for low-level dosimetry of carcinogens and mutagens and for the study of metabolic processes. He has been a scientific advisor to the UN Secretariat and has served on advisory committees for the

Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization, the Institute for Nuclear and Geologic Sciences of New Zealand, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the University of Chicago board of governors for Argonne National Laboratory. He is currently on program review committees for the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories, and he currently chairs the executive advisory board for Sandia’s Microscale Immune Studies Laboratory project. He also serves on the board of directors of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, the board of distinguished advisors for the American Committees on Foreign Relations and the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Research Council. For his contributions to national security during his tenure at DTRA, he was twice awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal, DoD’s highest civilian award. Dr. Davis received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in physics from the University of Texas and his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Wisconsin.


John A. Gordon is a private consultant and serves on the boards of several corporations and non-profit organizations. He served in the White House as the President's Homeland Security Advisor from June 2003 until June 2004 and as the deputy national security advisor for counter terrorism and the national director for counter terrorism from June 2002 to June 2003. Prior to joining the White House team, General Gordon was the first administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and undersecretary of energy, responsible for the entirety of the nation's nuclear weapons program, serving from June 2000 until June 2002. As an Air Force four-star general, he was the deputy director of central intelligence from October 1997 until June 2000. General Gordon's thirty-two year Air Force career included significant concentration on R&D, strategic planning, missile and space operations, inter-governmental operations, and international negotiations. He currently serves as a member on the Earth and Life Studies Division Committee of the National Research Council. General Gordon received his B.S. degree with honors in physics from the University of Missouri and received his M.S. degree from the Naval Postgraduate School. He also received an M.A. degree in business administration from the New Mexico Highlands University.


Darleane C. Hoffman is professor of the graduate school in the Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and faculty senior scientist, Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Her research interests include rapid chemical separation of short-lived fission products; separations chemistry of lanthanide, actinide and transactinide elements; search for heavy elements in nature; studies of radionuclide migration in geologic media; studies of the spontaneous fission process; heavy ion reactions and production of new neutron-rich heavy element isotopes; atom-at-a-time studies of chemical and nuclear properties of heaviest elements and has published more than 270 journal papers. Dr. Hoffman received B. S. and Ph. D. degrees from Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. She served as a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, spending years as a fellow or visiting scientist in Norway and LBNL. She returned to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to be Division Leader of the Chemistry-Nuclear Chemistry and Isotope and Nuclear Chemistry Divisions. In 1984, Dr. Hoffman joined the Department of Chemistry at UCB and leader of the Heavy Element Nuclear & Radiochemistry Group at LBNL. She helped found the Seaborg Institute for Transactinium Science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LNLL), serving as its first director. She is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the

Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
×

American Institute of Chemists, the American Physical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. She has received honorary doctorates from Clark University and Bern University. She received American Chemical Society Awards for Nuclear Chemistry, Garvan-Olin Medal, and the Priestley Medal. She was awarded the U. S. National Medal of Science in 1997, the Sigma Xi Proctor Prize for Scientific Achievement in 2003 and the 2007 J. V. Atasanoff Search & Discovery Award from Iowa State University.


Michael O. Larson retired in June 2007 from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) where he had worked for 33 years in the area of nuclear design. During this time he was principal investigator on 20 hydrodynamic experiments and 7 underground nuclear tests. He served as LLNL tactical navy military requirements officer and was project manager for the development of an Army nuclear weapons system. For the past 19 years Dr. Larson has worked with the Nuclear Emergency Support Team/Joint Technical Operations Team (NEST/JTOT) as the LLNL technical integration program manager in developing tools and techniques for deployment teams including support for the development of advance systems for detection and identification of nuclear materials. He has twice received Distinguished Service Awards from the NNSA. Dr. Larson received his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Utah and was an assistant research professor for 7 years in the Physics Department at the University of Utah.


Milton Levenson is an independent consultant. He is a chemical engineer with 65 years of experience in nuclear energy and related fields. His technical experience includes work related to nuclear safety, fuel cycle, water reactors, advanced reactors, and remote control. His professional experience includes research and operations positions at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Argonne National Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute, and Bechtel. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1976. Mr. Levenson is a fellow and past president of the American Nuclear Society, a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and recipient of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers' Robert E. Wilson Award in Nuclear Chemical Engineering. He is the author of more than 150 publications and presentations and holds three U.S. patents. Mr. Levenson has served as chairman or committee member for several National Academies studies. He received his B.Ch.E degree from the University of Minnesota.


Randall S. Murch is the associate director for research program development in the Research Division of Virginia Polytechnic Institute of the National Capital Region. He also holds adjunct professorships in the School of Public and International Affairs, College of Architecture and Urban Studies, and the Department of Plant Pathology. He is also a visiting professor in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK. From 2002 to 2004, Dr. Murch was on the research staff of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) where he led and participated in studies for the defense, intelligence, and homeland security communities. He is still an adjunct staff member at IDA. Prior to working at IDA, Dr. Murch served for 23 years as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). During his FBI career, he was assigned to the Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and New York field divisions, and to the national security, (forensic) laboratory and investigative technology (engineering) divisions at FBI Headquarters and Quantico, Virginia. He served as a department head and deputy division head in the FBI

Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
×

Laboratory, as well as a deputy division head of the FBI’s electronic surveillance division (investigative technology). He has extensive experience in counterintelligence, counterterrorism, forensic science, electronic surveillance, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threat reduction, and outreach to those communities. He created the FBI’s WMD forensic investigation/S&T response program in 1996, and served as the FBI’s science advisor to the 1996 Olympics. From 1999 to 2001, he was detailed to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) as director of DTRA’s advanced systems and concepts office. He has participated in National Research Council, Defense Science Board, and DTRA Threat Reduction Advisory Committee studies and panels and other senior review panels. Dr. Murch received a B.S. degree in biology from the University of Puget Sound, an M.S. degree in botanical sciences from the University of Hawaii, and a Ph.D. degree in plant pathology from the University of Illinois.


Jerry Wilhelmy has been a retired fellow of the Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2002. Dr. Wilhelmy is active in research and his interests have been centered on experimental nuclear science including work on nuclear fission, heavy ion reactions, superheavy elements, neutron induced reactions, supercritical atomic fields, laser driven fusion, national security applications, and weak interaction physics. He served as a group leader of the nuclear research group in the Chemical Science and Technology Division. He also served on the Transplutonium Advisory Committee for the National Research Council and the Transplutonium Assessment Panel of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Technical Review Committee. Dr. Wilhelmy was a visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute for Science and a research scientist at the Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik, and a post doctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He is the author or coauthor of over 100 publications on methods and phenomena in nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics. Dr. Wilhelmy received a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley.

Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Brief Biographies of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2010. Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk (Abbreviated Version). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12966.
×
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Nuclear forensics is important to our national security. Actions, including provision of appropriate funding, are needed now to sustain and improve the nation's nuclear forensics capabilities. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), working with cooperating agencies and national laboratories, should plan and implement a sustainable, effective nuclear forensics program.

Nuclear forensics is the examination and evaluation of discovered or seized nuclear materials and devices or, in cases of nuclear explosions or radiological dispersals, of detonation signals and post-detonation debris. Nuclear forensic evidence helps law enforcement and intelligence agencies work toward preventing, mitigating, and attributing a nuclear or radiological incident. This report, requested by DHS, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Department of Defense, makes recommendations on how to sustain and improve U.S. nuclear forensics capabilities.

The United States has developed a nuclear forensics capability that has been demonstrated in real-world incidents of interdicted materials and in exercises of actions required after a nuclear detonation. The committee, however, has concerns about the program and finds that without strong leadership, careful planning, and additional funds, these capabilities will decline.

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