Appendix A
Biographical Sketches of Steering Committee Members
Rodney C. Ewing, Chair, is a Regents' Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico, where he has been a member of the faculty for 23 years. Additionally, he is adjunct professor at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. His professional interests are in mineralogy and materials science, and his research has focused on radiation effects in complex ceramic materials and long-term durability of radioactive waste forms. Dr. Ewing has conducted research in Sweden, France, Germany, Australia, and Japan, as well as the United States. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the Mineralogical Society of America and is a member of Sigma Xi. He is president of the International Union of Materials Research Societies. He has served on several National Research Council committees as well as the Subcommittee on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology. Dr. Ewing received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from Stanford University.
John F. Ahearne is director of the Sigma Xi Center for Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, a lecturer in public policy and adjunct professor in civil and environmental engineering at Duke University, and an adjunct scholar at Resources for the Future. His professional interests are reactor safety, energy issues, resource allocation, and public policy management. He has served as commissioner and chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as system analyst for the White House Energy Office, as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy, and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Ahearne currently serves on the Department of Energy's Environmental Management Advisory Board and the National Research Council's Board on Radioactive Waste Management. In addition, Dr. Ahearne has been active in several National Research Council committees examining issues in risk assessment. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of Sigma Xi, the Society for Risk Analysis, the American Nuclear Society, and the National Academy of Engineering. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University.
Robert H. Doremus has been New York State Professor of Glass and Ceramics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for 25 years, and served as chairman of the Materials Department for 10 years. His main research interests are in glass and ceramic science, optical properties of metals, and biomaterials. Prior to university service, he was a physical chemist at the General Electric Research Laboratory. During leaves of absence from the university, Dr. Doremus taught and conducted research at L'Institute d'Optique, Paris; at the University of California, Berkeley; and most recently at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of Glass Science and Rates of Phase Transformations. Dr. Doremus is a fellow of the American Ceramic Society and a member of Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Sigma Tau. He has received many honors and awards during his career, including citation in Who's Who in America and the
Purdy Award from the American Ceramic Society. He has served on numerous professional organizations including chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Science Working Group on Glass, editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society, Glass Division, and regional editor of the Journal of Noncrystalline Solids. He received his Ph.D.s from the University of Illinois and Cambridge University.
Alexandra Navrotsky is the Albert G. Blanke Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University, where she has also served as department chair. Her research focuses on solid-state chemistry, ceramics, and the physics and chemistry of minerals, specifically calorimetric measurements of complex oxide compounds and interpretation and application of measurements to problems in earth physics, chemistry, and materials science. She is a visiting summer faculty member for IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center. Prior to her work at Princeton, Dr. Navrotsky was director of the Center for Solid State Science at Arizona State University, where she also served on the chemistry and geology faculty. Her honors include membership in the National Academy of Sciences and Phi Beta Kappa, fellowship in the American Geophysical Union, and numerous professional awards. Dr. Navrotsky received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Jean-Claude Petit has worked for the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, the French Atomic Energy Commission, for 18 years and was head of the Service for Research on the Storage and Disposal of Nuclear Wastes. Currently, he heads the Service of Molecular Chemistry. He has vast experience in the nuclear fuel cycle, especially radioactive waste management, and is interested in issues linked to science-technology-society interactions. He is involved in both fundamental and applied research in earth and environmental sciences as well as materials science. In France he is a member of the Société Française de Minéralogie et Cristallographie, the Société Française d'Energie Nucléare, and the Société Française de Chimie, where he serves on the board of the Division de Chimie-Physique. In the United States he is a member of the Materials Research Society and the Geochemical Society. Dr. Petit received a Ph.D. in earth sciences and a D.Sc. in physical sciences from the University of Paris and a Ph.D. in socioeconomics from the Paris School of Mines.
Raymond G. Wymer is currently an independent consultant based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and is retired director of the Chemical Technology Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he worked for over 37 years. His professional interests embrace all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. Prior to his work at Oak Ridge, he served as associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and as chief nuclear chemist for Industrial Reactor Labs. Dr. Wymer is currently active on several National Research Council committees: the Committee on Remediation of Buried and Tank Wastes, the Committee on Environmental Management Technology and its Subcommittee on Tanks, and the Committee on Electrometallurgical Technology. He is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society and a member of Sigma Xi and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University.
