Appendix C
Biographies of Planning Committee, Speakers, and Staff
INGRID C. BURKE (Planning Committee Chair) is director of the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources of the University of Wyoming and of its Ruckelshaus Institute. She also is a professor and holds a Wyoming Excellence Chair in the Department of Botany and the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management. She is a former professor and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar in the Warner College of Natural Resources of Colorado State University. Dr. Burke is an ecosystem scientist and has particular expertise in carbon and nitrogen cycling of semiarid ecosystems. She directed the Short-grass Steppe Long Term Ecological Research team for six years and other large interdisciplinary research teams funded by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. She was designated a US Presidential Faculty Fellow, has served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, and was a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Scientific Tools and Approaches for Sustainability. She also served as co-chair of the Committee on Economic and Environmental Impacts of Increasing Biofuels Production. She was recently elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Burke received a Ph.D. in botany from the University of Wyoming.
ANN BARTUSKA is deputy undersecretary for research, education, and economics (REE) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Previously, she was deputy chief for research & development in the USDA Forest Service, a position she held since January 2004. She recently served as acting USDA deputy
undersecretary for natural resources and environment from January to October of 2009, and was the executive director of the Invasive Species Initiative in the Nature Conservancy. Prior to this, she was the director of the Forest and Range-lands staff in the Forest Service in Washington, DC. She co-chaired the Academies’ Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability from 2010-2013. She currently co-chairs the Ecological Systems subcommittee of the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources of the White House National Science and Technology Council. She is active in the Ecological Society of America, serving as vice-president for public affairs from 1996-1999 and as president from 2002-2003. She has served on the board of the Council of Science Society Presidents and is a member of AAAS and of the Society of American Foresters. She is an ecosystem ecologist with degrees from Wilkes College (B.S.), Ohio University (M.S.), and West Virginia University (Ph.D.).
STEVE BERGMAN (Planning Committee Member) is a principal regional geologist in the Global Geology Upstream Exploration Research team at Shell International Exploration & Production Co. (Houston), and adjunct professor with Southern Methodist University (SMU, Dallas). Prior to Shell, he was principal research geologist with ARCO R&D for 20 years in Dallas and a visiting scholar at Bullard Laboratories, Cambridge University in 1996-1997. Dr. Bergman is exploration research geologist and geoscience educator with over 30 years of industry experience applying unconventional integrated field and laboratory approaches (completing over one hundred worldwide minerals and petroleum exploration and production projects) and five years of university teaching at UT Dallas and SMU. Dr. Bergman is a world-class expert in tectonics, regional structure, field geology, basin analysis, hard rock petrology, volcanology, and geochronology with 30 months of field expeditions in 17 U.S. states and 22 countries. He is co-author of a textbook (Petrology of Lamproites, Plenum Press, New York), over 40 journal papers, 120 internal company reports, and 150 conference and seminar presentations. He has served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability (STS) since 2012, the NRC STS Landscape Analysis Committee in 2015, and as an advisor to the U.S. Department of State on Arctic Geology Matters. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. Dr. Bergman earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in geology from Princeton University (1979 and 1982) and his B.S. in geology from University of Dayton (1977).
RICHARD L. BERNKNOPF has been a research professor in the Department of Economics at the University of New Mexico (UNM) since 2011. Before joining the faculty at UNM, Dr. Bernknopf was an economist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for more than 38 years. His research focuses on the demonstration of the relevance (value to society) of scientific data including earth observation and the translation of that information into a form compatible
with decision-making processes. During his tenure at USGS, he was a consulting professor and co-director of the Center for Earth Science Information Research at Stanford University and co-director of the Spatial Integration Laboratory for Urban Systems at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently he is an associate with the Science Impact Laboratory for Policy and Economics at the University of New Mexico and the Wharton Geospatial Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania.
GAIL BINGHAM is president emeritus of RESOLVE. She has mediated environmental, natural resources, community planning, and public health issues on a full-time basis since the late 1970s. She is a nationally recognized pioneer in promoting consensus-building tools in public decision making and is the 2006 winner of the Mary Parker Follett Award of the Association for Conflict Resolution. Ms. Bingham works with leaders at the highest levels of government and the private sector, and has served as a mediator for a wide variety of federal, state, and local agencies and private parties on such diverse subjects as sustainable water management, endangered species, wetlands policy, allocation of water rights, drinking water regulations, funding infrastructure costs for water and wastewater utilities, groundwater protection, ocean and coastal management issues, hydro-electric relicensing, chemicals policy, solid waste source reduction, hazardous waste management, oil spill contingency plans, pesticides policy, children’s environmental health, and local community land use and infrastructure issues. She currently serves on advisory committees for the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming and for the Center for Environmental Policy at American University. She also served on the Panel on Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making for the National Academy of Sciences. She served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution (now ACR); was the founding chair of its environment and public policy sector and a president of its Washington DC Chapter; and served on numerous committees, including the first and third Commissions on Mediator Qualifications. She also has testified before Congress on several occasions, on topics such as the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act and the Negotiated Rulemaking Act.
DOMINIC A. BROSE (NRC Staff) is a program officer for the Science and Technology for Sustainability Program (STS) at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Prior to STS, Dr. Brose was a research assistant with the National Academy of Medicine where he collaborated on science policy reports sponsored by the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) addressing the potential for adverse health effects from exposure of select military personnel to environmental contaminants. Previously, he was an environmental scientist at ToxServices LLC, where he reviewed product formulations for EPA’s Design for the Environment (DfE) program, a third-party service that evaluated product for-
mulations against human health and environmental screening criteria. Dr. Brose received his M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental soil chemistry from the University of Maryland, and his B.S. in natural resources and environmental science from Purdue University.
STEVE ELLIS is the deputy director for operations at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). As a veteran land manager, Mr. Ellis has spent 21 years as a line officer in the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service, and as BLM-Idaho state director. Among other Forest Service positions, he was the forest supervisor for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in Oregon. He has also held numerous jobs throughout the BLM, including acting associate district manager in Las Vegas, district manager of Oregon’s Lakeview District, and acting deputy state director in Alaska. He has extensive wildfire experience in the West, including serving as an incident commander, and has worked as a budget officer in the agency’s headquarters office in Washington, D.C. During his time in Washington, Mr. Ellis was selected and served as a congressional fellow in the U.S. Senate. He holds a B.S. in forestry from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and an M.S. in geography from Northern Illinois University at DeKalb.
ELSA HAUBOLD has served as the national Landscape Conservation Cooperative coordinator since September 2013. Previously, she worked for 12 years on wildlife diversity and endangered species issues at the state, regional, and national level with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Dr. Haubold also has a wealth of nongovernmental organizational experience, having coordinated the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Dr. Haubold is passionate about working with partners and stakeholders to find common ground and solutions to seemingly insurmountable conservation challenges. She has a B.S. in wildlife and fisheries science, M.S. in veterinary anatomy from Texas A&M University, Ph.D. in pathology from the University of Texas Medical Branch, and MBA from the University of Houston Clear Lake.
MURRAY W. HITZMAN worked in the petroleum and minerals industries from 1976-1993, primarily doing mineral exploration worldwide and was largely responsible for Chevron Corporation’s Lisheen Zn-Pb-Ag deposit discovery in Ireland (1990). Dr. Hitzman served in Washington, D.C., as a policy analyst in the U.S. Senate for Senator Joseph Lieberman (1993-1994) and in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (1994-1996). In 1996 he was named the Fogarty Professor in Economic Geology at the Colorado School of Mines and served as head of the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering from 2002-2007. While his research in economic geology with graduate students has been conducted around the world, for the past 17 years he has focused his attention on the Central African Copperbelt. Dr. Hitzman has published extensively on the geology and geochemistry of mineral deposits and on natural resource
policy issues. He served as the president of the Society of Economic Geologists in 2006. He is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Geological and Geotechnical Engineering. He has also served on the boards of a number of junior mineral exploration and mining companies. He holds B.A. degrees in geology and anthropology from Dartmouth, an M.S. in geology from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in geology from Stanford.
PATRICK HUBER has held the positions of postdoctoral scholar and project scientist at the Information Center for the Environment (ICE) at the University of California, Davis. As a conservation scientist, he has performed spatial and other analyses for a variety of projects both in California and at the global scale. He has worked with a wide range of collaborators in public agencies, private organizations, universities, and corporations. Some areas of emphasis in his work include landscape connectivity; reserve design; conservation prioritization; mitigation for infrastructure impacts; and geospatial analysis (primarily using GIS). Currently much of his work focuses on integrating stakeholders and conservation priorities at the regional scale to help produce systematic and integrated conservation plans. Some of his primary tools include Marxan reserve selection software and GIS connectivity modeling tools. He received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Davis
KAREN JENNI is the founder and president of Insight Decisions, LLC. She is a professional decision analyst with over 25 years of consulting experience leading, managing, and conducting projects involving the application of decision analysis and risk management techniques to large-scale energy and environmental policy problems. Her areas of expertise include decision analysis, multi-attribute analysis, behavioral decision theory, and integrated risk modeling. She has been involved in several previous Academies’ studies as a consultant, committee member, and as a reviewer. She received a Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
ROBERT J. JOHNSTON (Planning Committee Member) is director of the George Perkins Marsh Institute and professor of economics at Clark University. Dr. Johnston’s research addresses benefit cost analysis, economic valuation, benefit transfer, and ecosystem services, with an emphasis on aquatic, riparian, and coastal systems. His recent work has focused on the economics of coastal vulnerability and adaptation. He is a current member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, the Ecosystem Science and Management Working Group of the NOAA Scientific Advisory Board, the Management Committee and Science Advisory Board of the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, the Senior Advisory Board of the Connecticut Sea Grant Program, the Program Advisory Council of the New York Sea Grant Program, and the Program Committee for the Charles Darwin
Foundation in Galapagos, Ecuador. He also serves on the Council on Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics (C-FARE) Blue Ribbon Panel on Natural Resources and Environmental Issues. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters on the economics of the environment and natural resource management. He has a Ph.D. in resource economics from the University of Rhode Island and a B.A. in economics from Williams College.
JOSEPH KIESECKER (Planning Committee Member) is a lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Lands Team. In this capacity, his main responsibilities include developing new tools, methods, and techniques that improve conservation. He pioneered the Conservancy’s Development by Design strategy to improve impact mitigation through the incorporation of predictive modeling to provide solutions that benefits conservation goals and development. He also conducts his own research in areas ranging from disease ecology to the effectiveness of new conservation tools such as conservation easements. He has held faculty appointments at Yale University, Penn State University, and currently holds a faculty appointment at the University of Wyoming. He has been a Donnelly Fellow and has received funding for his research from National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and numerous private foundations. Dr. Kiesecker has published over 100 articles, on topics ranging from climate change to the effectiveness of conservation strategies; examples of his work have been published in Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Conservation Biology, Ecology and American Scientist. His training was in ecology, conservation biology, and animal behavior, with a Ph.D. from Oregon State University in 1997.
SUZETTE KIMBALL is acting director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and is responsible for leading the nation’s largest water, earth, and biological science, and civilian mapping agency. Prior to becoming the acting director, Dr. Kimball was the USGS deputy director. In 2008, she became the acting associate director for geology, and prior to that was the director of the USGS eastern region, starting in 2004. She joined the USGS as eastern regional executive for biology. In that position, she built many partnerships, helped shape programs, and led the establishment of the USGS Florida Integrated Science Center. She came to the USGS from the National Park Service in Atlanta, where she was associate regional director. She entered the National Park Service as a research coordinator in the Global Climate Change Program, became southeast regional chief scientist, and then associate regional director. She was assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, co-director of the Center for Coastal Management and Policy and marine scientist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and she managed coastal morphology and barrier island studies in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Dr. Kimball has a doctorate in environmental sciences with a specialty in coastal processes from the University of Virginia, a
master’s in geology and geophysics from Ball State University, and a bachelor’s in English and geology from the College of William & Mary.
JERRY L. MILLER (NRC Staff) has been director of the Science and Technology for Sustainability (STS) Program since February 2, 2015. A senior executive with expertise in science and resource management policy with more than 20 years of experience, Dr. Miller is the NRC’s senior scientist driving policy and program direction on sustainability-related issues. Previously, Dr. Miller served as president of Science for Decisions, a consulting practice that he founded to ensure that solid science is available to inform policy and management decisions that impact natural resources and the livelihoods that depend upon them. From 2009 until 2013, Dr. Miller served as assistant director for ocean sciences at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). During his time at OSTP, Dr. Miller was instrumental in the creation of the nation’s first National Ocean Policy and the development of its foundational science priorities. He was founding co-director of the National Ocean Council Office and later served as its deputy director for Science and Technology. Before taking on his role at OSTP, Dr. Miller was technical director and director of research at the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (now the Consortium for Ocean Leadership), where he had management and oversight responsibilities for the program offices of the U.S. National Oceanographic Partnership Program, the national and international Census of Marine Life programs, and other community-wide activities. As associate director for ocean, atmosphere, and space sciences at the Office of Naval Research’s global office in London, he built international programs in ocean and atmosphere modeling as well as remote sensing. Dr. Miller has published widely in the peer-reviewed literature and has made significant contributions to several major federal policy documents. His work has been recognized with awards both in the United States and abroad, including a Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Miller received his B.S. in marine science from the University of South Carolina, M.S. in oceanography from University of Rhode Island, and Ph.D. in meteorology and physical oceanography from University of Miami.
KIT MULLER serves as management and program analyst at the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) Bureau of Land Management (BLM). As a strategic planner, Mr. Muller has guided the BLM’s efforts to systematically understand and address the effects of climate change, wildfire, invasive species, industrial development, and urban growth on landscape management. He received his B.S. in social anthropology from Harvard University and M.S. in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.
ELIZABETH MURRAY (Planning Committee Member) has worked as a wetland scientist for 20 years, specializing in wetland assessment, ecological
restoration, and resource management. Ms. Murray currently works as a research biologist in the Wetlands and Coastal Ecology branch of the Environmental Laboratory (EL) of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). She has co-authored eight Hydrogeomorphic (HGM) functional assessment regional guidebooks for wetlands in various parts of the country, covering over 40 regional subclasses. She has also developed spreadsheet Functional Capacity Index calculators and interactive data forms, as well as scientific illustrations, for many others. She has performed wetland functional assessments on large civil works projects. Although she is most involved in HGM assessment approaches, she has also researched, helped develop, or reviewed several other wetland assessment methods, including California Rapid Assessment Method (CRAM), Landscape Development Intensity (LDI) index approaches, and remote sensing techniques. She is co-author on one of the resulting atlases, as well as a Wetlands article on the techniques used in the mapping. She is co-PI on the Corps’ national effort to investigate the potential for incorporating ecosystem goods and services in civil works and restoration planning. Ms. Murray has a B.S. in biology from the University of California, San Diego, and M.S. in environmental science from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.
PAUL SANDIFER, recently retired from NOAA, is currently a part-time research associate (professor) in the School of Sciences and Mathematics at the College (University) of Charleston, South Carolina where he conducts research and advises graduate students. Dr. Sandifer is a coastal ecologist with a broad background in research, natural resource management, science policy, and the intersection of marine ecosystem health and human health. His prior career includes nearly 12 years in NOAA, where he served as a senior scientist, science advisor to the NOAA administrator, and chief science advisor for NOAA’s National Ocean Service, and he was responsible for development of NOAA’s Oceans and Human Health Program. Before NOAA, he worked 31 years with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources where he served in a variety of science and management positions including as agency director. Recently, he led establishment of a NOAA-wide effort in ecological forecasting, initial stages of development of NOAA’s RESTORE Act Science Program for the Gulf of Mexico, creation of NOAA’s highly regarded scientific integrity policy, and played key roles in the development of the National Ocean Policy. He has served on numerous boards and interagency committees, including the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, the NAS Marine Board and several Roundtables, the CENRS Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology, the U.S. National Committee for the Census of Marine Life, and the Founding Board of Directors of the South Carolina Aquarium.
MARK SCHAEFER is presently a global fellow affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He previously served as assistant sec-
retary of commerce for conservation and management, and deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for coastal and ocean programs. From 2008-2013, he was director of the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution at the Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation, a federal agency. From 2007-2008, he served as a senior advisor and consultant to several organizations on environmental science and technology policy, including the Woodrow Wilson Center. From 2006-2007, he was CEO of the Global Environment and Technology Foundation, an organization dedicated to the advancement of sustainable development and environmental technologies worldwide. From 2000-2006, he was president and CEO of NatureServe, an international nonprofit scientific organization providing information and analytical tools to inform conservation decision making. From 1996-2000, he served as deputy assistant secretary, and later acting assistant secretary of the Interior for Water and Science. In this position he provided policy guidance to the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Dr. Schaefer was acting director of the U.S. Geological Survey from October 1997 to February 1998. He previously served for three years as assistant director for environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he was responsible for a variety of energy and environmental science, technology, and education issues, including a major initiative to advance the development and diffusion of environmental and renewable energy technologies nationally and globally. He served two terms as a member of the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and was a member of the Commission on Education and Communication of the World Conservation Union (IUCN). A biologist by training, he received a B.A. (zoology and botany) from the University of Washington and Ph.D. (neurosciences) from Stanford University.
IONE TAYLOR joined Queen’s University in 2014 as executive director, Earth and Energy Resources Leadership. She is responsible for developing a graduate-level professional program that integrates geosciences, engineering, economics, legal, societal, and policy concepts into a curriculum to develop the next generation of enterprise leaders for the natural resource sector. She began her career in the petroleum industry, working as an operations geologist on drilling wells in the Gulf of Mexico. She spent the next 15 years focused on domestic and international hydrocarbon exploration, holding multiple scientific and technical positions at Amoco Production Company and British Petroleum. Dr. Taylor eventually moved into senior leadership positions including R&D director of worldwide technology applications, vice president of overseas exploration, and upstream technology group lead for Worldwide Reservoir Description. She subsequently entered U.S. federal government service with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in the Department of the Interior, with positions focused on energy and mineral resource security for the United States, interdisciplinary environmental
science, and application of satellite remote sensing for earth observation. Most recently, as USGS associate director for energy and minerals, and environmental health, Dr. Taylor served as the senior executive responsible for oversight of geological research and assessment programs for energy and mineral resources and economics to inform natural resource management. She holds a B.S. degree in chemistry and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geology, is a graduate of Thunderbird School of Global Management, and holds an executive certificate in Strategy and Innovation from Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
DEAN URBAN is a professor of landscape ecology at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Dr. Urban’s interest in landscape ecology focuses on the agents and implications of pattern in forested landscapes. Increasingly, his research is in what has been termed “theoretical applied ecology,” developing new analytic approaches to applications of immediate practical concern such as conservation planning. A hallmark of his lab is the integration of field studies, spatial analysis, and simulation modeling in extrapolating fine-scale empirical understanding of environmental issues to the larger space and time scales of management and policy. Dr. Urban received his Ph.D. from University of Tennessee, Knoxville, his M.A. from Southern Illinois University, and his B.A. from Southern Illinois University.
LISA A. WAINGER is a research professor of environmental economics at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Her primary research interest is in developing integrated ecological and economic analysis tools to analyze risk and economic efficiency of policy alternatives. Her work emphasizes the spatial variability of ecosystem service benefits to support decisions for prioritizing restoration and preservation. She has over 20 years of experience working, nationally and internationally, with government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private firms to address issues of agro-ecosystem management, invasive species, wetland mitigation, preserving habitat for rare species, and water quality. She currently serves or has served on numerous federal and other advisory boards including the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee to the Chesapeake Bay Program, White House Council on Environmental Quality, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. She received her B.S. in earth science from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her Ph.D. in environmental and ecological economics at the University of Maryland, College Park.
