D
Biographical Sketches of
Committee Members
The following are brief biographies of the members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) ad hoc committee responsible for this report.
William (Bill) Spencer [NAE] (Co-Chair) is chairman emeritus of the International SEMATECH Board. He served as chairman of the SEMATECH and International SEMATECH boards and president and chief executive officer of SEMATECH. Dr. Spencer has held key research positions at Xerox Corporation, Bell Laboratories, and Sandia National Laboratories. He received the Regents Meritorious Service Medal from the University of New Mexico in 1981; the C. B. Sawyer Award for contribution to The Theory and Development of Piezoelectric Devices in 1972; and a citation for achievement from William Jewell College in 1969, where he also received a doctor of science degree in 1990.
Dr. Spencer is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and serves on numerous advisory groups and boards. He is a member of the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy at the National Academies. He was the Regents Professor at the University of California in the spring of 1998 and has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Engineering and the Haas School of Business since the fall of 1998. He is a research professor of medicine at the University of New Mexico. He received his A.B. degree from William Jewell College, M.S. degree in mathematics and Ph.D. in physics from Kansas State University.
Norine E. Noonan (Co-Chair) is Professor of Biology at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP) and Director of the Advanced Placement Summer Institute at USFSP (endorsed by the College Board). From 2008 to 2013, she served as the Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs at USFSP. She previously served as the Dean of the School of Sciences and Mathematics at the College of Charleston, and as Vice President for Research
and Dean of the Graduate School at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.
Between her service at Florida Tech and Charleston, Dr. Noonan served as the presidentially Assistant Administrator for Research and Development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Clinton. Prior to joining Florida Tech, Dr. Noonan was Chief of the Science and Space Programs Branch, Energy and Science Division, at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in Washington, DC, and oversaw programs at the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Smithsonian Institution, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and National Gallery of Art. She had a prominent role in developing and implementing civil space policy as well as monitoring and evaluating federal research and development, including education. She received two Special Performance Awards and an Outstanding Service Award from OMB.
Dr. Noonan is a member and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and was a member of the AAAS Board of Directors (2002-2006) and the AAAS Council (2005-2008). Her professional activities have included membership on six NSF Advisory Committees, several study committees of the National Research Council, and the AAAS review panel on NSF Science and Technology Centers. In October of 2005, she received the NASA Public Service Medal. Dr. Noonan received her B.A. in zoology from the University of Vermont, summa cum laude, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in cell biology from Princeton University..
Roger Beachy [NAS] is professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis and executive director (interim) of the Global Institute for Food Security at the University of Saskatchewan (Canada). He was Scripps Family Chair in Cell Biology at the Scripps Research Institute (1991–1999) and founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (1999–2009). Dr. Beachy was appointed director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (2009–2011). He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1997), was elected to the NAS Council (2003), and served as a member of the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Beachy is a Foreign Associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Science, India, and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS); he is a fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Academy of Science of St. Louis. Dr. Beachy is known for his work in plant virology and molecular biology and agriculture biotechnology. In 2001 he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture, and in 1991 he was a recipient of the Bank of Delaware’s Commonwealth Award for Science and Industry. He received awards from the American Society of Plant Biologists, the American Phytopathological Society, among others. He serves or has served on the Board of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in
Hyderabad, India, the Advisory Board of BIOTEC in Bangkok, Thailand; on advisory boards of venture capital funds, and boards for a number of companies and institutions.
Richard (Dick) F. Celeste is the president emeritus of Colorado College, where he served until 2011. He was the U.S. ambassador to India from 1997 until 2001. He was a managing partner in the consulting firm of Celeste & Sabety, Ltd., after serving as governor of Ohio from 1983 to 1991. He is a current member of the Policy and Global Affairs Committee with the National Academies, and has served on the NRC’s Committee on Science, Technology, and Law; the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable; and the Coordinating Council for Education. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, where he remained for one additional year as a Carnegie Teaching Fellow. In 1961 he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He returned to Yale in 1963 for graduate study, working as curriculum advisor and part-time civics teacher.
Robert Duncan is the vice chancellor for research at the University of Missouri. He previously served as a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico (UNM), visiting associate on the physics faculty of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), joint associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UNM, and associate dean for research in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNM. Dr. Duncan has published extensively in low temperature physics, and he has served as a principal investigator on a fundamental physics research program for NASA. As director of the New Mexico Consortium’s Institute for Advanced Studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, he has worked to fund major conferences and summer schools in quantitative biology, information science and technology, energy and environment, and astrophysics and cosmology. He has chaired the Fundamental Physical Sciences Panel for the Committee for the Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space with the National Academies. Dr. Duncan is a fellow and life member of the American Physical Society (APS). He was named the Gordon and Betty Moore Distinguished Scholar in the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy at Caltech in 2004, and has recently chaired both the APS’s Topical Group on Instrumentation and Measurement and the International Symposium on Quantum Fluids and Solids.
Irwin Feller is professor emeritus of economics and former director of the Institute for Policy Research and Evaluation at Pennsylvania State University, where he has been on the faculty since 1963. Dr. Feller’s current research interests include the evaluation of public sector research and development programs; economics of academic research; the role of universities in technology-based economic development; and the evaluation of federal and state technology programs. He is one of the nation’s leading authorities on these topics. He is the author of Universities and State Governments: A Study in
Policy Analysis (Praeger Publishers, 1986) and more than 100 refereed journal articles, final research reports, book chapters, and reviews, as well as of numerous papers presented to academic, professional, and policy audiences. He serves on the Committee on National Research Frameworks with the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies. He also formerly chaired the AAAS Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. He received a B.B.A. from City College of New York and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Elisabeth (Beth) Gantt [NAS] is a distinguished university professor emerita in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Maryland. Her research focused on the photosynthetic apparatus of algae, among other plants, investigating questions about plant’s absorption and utilization of light energy. Among other honors, she received the National Academies’ Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal in 1994 for her discovery of a new type of light-harvesting complex called a phycobilisome, unique to red and blue-green algae. She has been a member of several NAS committees and currently serves as the liaison to the NRC for Section 25: Plant Biology. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Department of Energy’s Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center at Washington University, Saint Louis. She received her Ph.D. in biology from Northwestern University in 1963 and her B.A. in biology from Blackburn College in 1958.
C. Judson (Jud) King [NAE] is the director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education and professor emeritus of chemical engineering at the University of California (UC) Berkeley. From 1995–2004 he served as provost and senior vice president of academic affairs for the University of California system and before that as dean of the College of Chemistry and provost of Professional Schools and Colleges on the Berkeley campus. His administrative responsibilities included the oversight of academic planning and of research and academic policies for the UC system, including academic and programmatic coordination among the 10 UC campuses and the 3 national laboratories managed by the university and frequent dealings with the regents of the University of California and the state government. Dr. King is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received major awards from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, American Chemical Society, American Society for Engineering Education, and Council for Chemical Research. He received his Sc.D. and S.M. both in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1960 and 1958, respectively, and his B.E. in chemical engineering from Yale University in 1956.
John (Jack) Linehan [NAE] is a professor of biomedical engineering and was the director of the Center for Translational Innovation at Northwestern University. He previously served as consulting professor of bioengineering in
the Department of Bioengineering and the Biodesign Program at Stanford University. Dr. Linehan was vice president of the Whitaker Foundation from 1998 to 2005. He was responsible for implementing and managing educational grant programs and creating and organizing a number of unique national programs, including the Biomedical Engineering Educational Summit meetings (2000 and 2005) and the Academic Leadership Program for developing young faculty leaders. Dr. Linehan was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006. He is a fellow and past president of the Biomedical Engineering Society and a founding fellow and past president of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Percy A. Pierre [NAE] is professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan State University. He also directs programs to recruit and mentor domestic graduate students in the College of Engineering, with an emphasis on underrepresented groups, and collaborates on research programs with other faculty members in the college. His specific research includes applications of stochastic models in engineering systems. In 1969 he began a series of administrative posts in government and higher education that included posts as a White House fellow; dean of the College of Engineering at Howard University in Washington, D.C.; assistant secretary of the Army for Research, Development and Acquisition; and vice president of research and graduate studies at Michigan State University, among others. Dr. Pierre has received multiple awards and honors, and is a trustee emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, and a director of the White House Fellows Foundation and Association. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an active member of the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy. Dr. Pierre received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1967 and his M.S. and B.S. from the University of Notre Dame in 1963 and 1961, respectively.
Subhash Singhal [NAE] is a Battelle Fellow Emeritus at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Dr. Singhal also serves as adjunct professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Utah. He is a recognized expert in solid oxide fuel cells. He provides senior technical, managerial, and commercialization leadership to PNNL’s fuel cell program. He joined the PNNL in 2000 after nearly 30 years leading fuel cell development at Siemens Power Generation (formerly Westinghouse Electric Corporation). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of four professional societies: American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Ceramic Society, ASM International, and Electrochemical Society. He has authored and edited numerous scientific publications and acquired many patents. He received a bachelor’s degree in metallurgy from the Indian Institute of Science; a bachelor’s degree in physics, chemistry, and mathematics from Agra University, India; an M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh; and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
Charles (Chuck) Staben is the provost and vice president for academic affairs of the University of South Dakota, and a professor in the Department of Biology. While vice president for research at the University of Kentucky in 2006–2007, he represented the university as a SURA Trustee, a member of the state EPSCoR committee, a member of the Advisory Board for Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation, and an institutional representative, Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). Other EPSCoR program affiliations include NSF EPSCoR reviewer for Kentucky REG Grants in 1996 and the director of the National EPSCoR/IDeA Foundation Board from 2007 to 2008. Dr. Staben’s research interests focused on bioinformatics, especially in fungal genomics. He received his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1978) and his Ph.D. also in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley (1984).
George R. Stark [NAS/IOM] is a distinguished scientist of the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute and a professor emeritus of genetics at Case Western Reserve University. Previously, Dr. Stark was the director of the Lerner Research Institute from 1992 to 2002. He served on numerous scientific advisory boards for biotechnology companies. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine and also a fellow of the Royal Society of London. He is well known for his work in protein biochemistry and his early work on enzyme mechanisms. He developed the foundational Northern and Western blot techniques that detect specific nucleic acids and proteins, respectively. Dr. Stark received his Ph.D. and his B.A. in chemistry, both from Columbia in 1959 and 1955, respectively.
Albert Teich is research professor of science, technology and international affairs in the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at the Elliott School of George Washington University. He retired as senior policy adviser at the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the end of 2011. From 1984 through 2010 he directed the association’s activities in science and technology policy and served as a key spokesman on science policy issues. Prior to joining the AAAS staff in 1980, he held positions at George Washington University, the State University of New York, and Syracuse University. He is the author of numerous articles and editor of several books, including reviews of the EPSCoR program with the AAAS Research Competitiveness Program. He has served with the Transportation Research Board’s Research and Technology Coordinating Committee. Dr. Teich received a B.S. degree in physics and a Ph.D. in political science, both from MIT.
