Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff
William G. Boggess, Chair, is professor and executive associate dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Oregon State University (OSU). He previously served as the president of the OSU Faculty Senate. Prior to joining OSU, Dr. Boggess spent 16 years on the faculty at the University of Florida in the Food and Resource Economics Department where he was involved with Everglades work. His research interests include interactions between agriculture and the environment (e.g., water allocation, groundwater contamination, surface-water pollution, sustainable systems, water and environmental policy); economic dimensions and indicators of ecosystem health; and applications of real options to environmental and natural resources. Dr. Boggess previously served on the Oregon Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors, the Board of Directors of the American Agricultural Economics Association, and the Food Alliance, and he currently serves on the Board of the Oregon Environmental Council. He served on the State of Oregon Environment Report Science Panel and has been active in the design and assessment of the Oregon Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. Dr. Boggess served as a member of the NRC Committee on the Use of Treated Municipal Wastewater Effluents and Sludge in the Production of Crops for Human Consumption, and on the second and third Committees on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress. He received his Ph.D. from Iowa State University in 1979.
Mary Jane Angelo is professor of law at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law and Director of the Environmental and Land Use Law Program. Her research areas focus on environmental law, water law, administrative law, biotechnology law, dispute resolution, pesticides law, law and science, and legal ethics. Prior to joining the faculty, Ms. Angelo served as an attorney in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of General Counsel and as senior assistant general counsel for the St. Johns River Water Management District. She
received her B.S. in biological sciences from Rutgers University and her M.S. and J.D. from the University of Florida.
David B. Ashley is professor of civil engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Dr. Ashley also served as the eighth president at the school from 2006 to 2009. Prior to joining UNLV, President Ashley served as executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Merced and held the Shaffer-George Chair in Engineering. He has also served as dean of engineering at The Ohio State University and has held civil engineering faculty positions at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Ashley’s principal research and teaching activities are in the area of construction project planning, focusing primarily on risk analysis and management of large-scale, complex projects. His recent studies have addressed innovative project financing and new project procurement approaches. He has served on several NRC committees, including the Committee on Assessing the Results of External Independent Reviews for U.S. Department of Energy Projects. Dr. Ashley received a B.S. in civil engineering and an M.S. in civil engineering-project management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an M.S. in engineering-economic systems and a Ph.D. in civil engineering-constructing engineering and management from Stanford University.
Charles T. Driscoll (NAE) is university professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Syracuse University where he also serves as the director of the Center for Environmental Systems Engineering. His teaching and research interests are in the area of environmental chemistry, biogeochemistry, and environmental quality modeling. A principal research focus has been the response of forest, aquatic, and coastal ecosystems to disturbance, including air pollution, land use change, and elevated inputs of nutrients and mercury. Dr. Driscoll is currently a principal investigator of the National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research Network’s project at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and was a member of the NRC’s Panel on Process of Lake Acidification, the Committees on Air Quality Management in the U.S. and the Collaborative Large-scale Engineering Analysis Network for Environmental Research (CLEANER), and the second and third Committees on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress. Dr. Driscoll received his B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Maine and his M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Cornell University.
William L. Graf is Foundation University Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, at the University of South Carolina. His expertise is in fluvial geomorphology and hydrology, as well as policy for public land and water. Dr. Graf’s research and teaching have focused on river-channel change, human impacts on river processes, morphology, and ecology, along with contaminant transport and storage in river systems. His present work emphasizes the downstream effects of dams on rivers. In the arena of public policy, he has emphasized the interaction of science and decision making, and the resolution of conflicts among economic development, historical preservation, and environmental restoration for rivers. Dr. Graf has served as member of the NRC’s Water Science and Technology Board and Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, the Panel to Review the Critical Ecosystem Studies Initiative, the Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem, and the first three Committees on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress, serving as chair of the second committee. He is chair of the NRC’s Geographical Sciences Committee. He is also a national associate of the National Academies and an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow. Dr. Graf earned a certificate of water resources management and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1974.
Wendy D. Graham is the Carl S. Swisher Eminent Scholar in Water Resources in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Florida and director of the University of Florida Water Institute. Her research is focused on coupled hydrologic-water quality-ecosystem modeling; water resources evaluation and remediation; evaluation of impacts of agricultural production on surface- and groundwater quality; and development of hydrologic indicators of ecosystem status. She has previous NRC committee experience, having served on the Committee on Seeing into the Earth: Non-Invasive Techniques for Characterization of the Shallow Subsurface for Environmental Engineering Applications, and as a member of the third Committee on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress. Dr. Graham received her B.S.E. in environmental engineering from the University of Florida and her Ph.D. in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Sam Luoma is an emeritus senior research hydrologist in the Water Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey, where he worked for 34 years. He also holds an appointment as a research professor at The John Muir Institute of the Environment, University of California, Davis. Dr. Luoma’s research centers on fate and effects of chemical contaminants, including their interactions with sediments, particularly in the San Francisco Bay-Delta. He served as the first
lead scientist on the CALFED Bay-delta program and is the editor-in-chief of San Francisco Estuary & Watershed Science. He has published extensively on the bioavailability and ecological effects of metals in aquatic environments as well as on environmental implications of nanotechnology and coordination between science and water policy. He has helped refine approaches to determine the toxicity of marine and estuarine sediments. In 2004 he was a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar at The Natural History Museum, London, and continues to be affiliated with that institution working on environmental contamination issues. He has served multiple times on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board Subcommittee on Sediment Quality Criteria and on several NRC committees, including the Committee on Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta. Dr. Luoma received his B.S. and M.S. in zoology from Montana State University, Bozeman, and his Ph.D. in marine biology from the University of Hawaii, Honolulu.
David R. Maidment is the Hussein M. Alharthy Centennial Chair in Civil Engineering and director of the Center for Research in Water Resources at the University of Texas at Austin. His expertise is in surfacewater hydrology, and in particular in the application of geographic information systems to hydrology. Dr. Maidment has extensive previous NRC committee experience, having served as chair of four committees, including two concerned with Federal Emergency Management Agency floodplain mapping and two concerned with U.S. Geological Survey water resources research, and a member of three other committees, including the Committee on Review of Methods for Establishing Instream Flows for Texas Rivers. He received his B.E. in agricultural engineering from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
David H. Moreau is Research Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He recently completed a term as Chair of the Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology. His research interests include analysis, planning, financing, and evaluation of water resource, water quality, and related environmental programs. Dr. Moreau is engaged in water resources planning at the local, state, and national levels. He has served on several NRC committees, including the Committee on New Orleans Regional Hurricane Protection Projects Review, the Committee on the Mississippi River and Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, and the second, third, and fourth Committees on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress, and he is a current member of the Water Science and Technology Board. Dr. Moreau recently completed 19 years as a member and 16 years as
Chairman of the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission, the state’s regulatory commission for water quality, air quality, and water allocation. For his service to North Carolina he was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian award offered by the State. He received his B.S. and M.S. from Mississippi State University and North Carolina State University, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree from Harvard University.
Scott Nixon was professor of oceanography and the URI UNESCO-Cousteau Chair in Coastal Ecology and Global Assessment at the University of Rhode Island. His research focused on productivity and biogeochemical cycling of coastal ecosystems, with emphasis on estuaries, lagoons, and wetlands. He was interested in comparative and historical ecology and conducted ecosystem-level experiments using mesocosms. Dr. Nixon previously served as a member of the NRC’s Ocean Studies Board, chair of the Committee to Review the Florida Keys Carrying Capacity Study, vice-chair of the Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem, and a member of four other NRC committees. He was a past co-editor-in-chief of Estuaries and Coasts and a national associate of the National Academies. He also had served as the director of Rhode Island Sea Grant from 1984 to 2000. Dr. Nixon received a B.A. in biology from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in botany/ecology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
K. Ramesh Reddy is graduate research professor and chair of the Department of Soil and Water Science at the University of Florida. His research areas include biogeochemistry, soil and water quality, ecological indicators, and restoration of wetlands, and aquatic systems. Dr. Reddy investigates biogeochemical cycling of macro-nutrients in natural ecosystems, including wetlands, shallow lakes, estuaries, and constructed wetlands, as related to soil and water quality, carbon sequestration, and greenhouse gas emissions. He served as a member of the U.S. National Committee for Soil Sciences in the National Academy’s Policy and Global Affairs Division. He served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board Panel. Dr. Reddy served as a member of the second and third Committees on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress. Dr. Reddy earned his Ph.D. in agronomy and soil science from Louisiana State University in 1976.
Helen Regan is an associate professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside. Her research areas span quantitative conservation ecology and probabilistic risk assessment. Dr. Regan has applied population models, uncertainty analyses, and decision-making techniques to address a variety of conservation
and wildlife management issues. She focuses on methodological issues of these techniques, the practicalities of their application and their interpretation for management. Projects include ecological risk assessment of chemical contaminants, population viability of species impacted by a range threats, monitoring of multiple species habitat conservation plans, population-level effects of habitat fragmentation, and fire and disease on plants in fire-prone ecosystems. Current research includes examination of the impact of uncertainty on potential adaptation strategies for threatened species impacted by climate change. She currently serves on the Standards and Petitions Subcommittee of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission and on the scientific advisory committee for the Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis. Dr. Regan received her B.S. from LaTrobe University and her Ph.D. from the University of New England in Armidale, both in Australia.
Eliska Rejmankova is a professor in the department of Environmental Science and Policy at University of California, Davis, where she has been a member of the community since 1987. Her current research encompasses wetland ecology at population, community, and ecosystem levels. At the ecosystem level she studies vegetation response to changes in nutrient inputs and salinity. At the population and community levels she focuses on life histories of several South/Central American species of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. In addition to her current research, Dr. Rejmankova’s interests include ecosystem and community ecology with particular attention to aquatic and wetland environments; wetland biogeochemistry; response of micro- and macrophytes to changes in nutrient limitation; nutrient resorption; life history strategies of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes habitat selection by ovipositing females; larval habitat characteristics; linking the changes of ecosystem structure to changes in malaria vector species with applications for malaria risk assessment; and wetland ecosystem management and conservation. She has been a member of the working group on tropical coastal research named “Caribbean Initiative” and has been on the advisory board for the ecology education at the University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic. Dr. Rejmankova received a B.S. and M.Sc. in Botany from Charles University in Prague and a Ph.D. in plant ecology from the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Jeff Walters is the Harold Bailey Professor of Biology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, a position he has held since 1994. His professional experience includes assistant, associate, and full professorships at North Carolina State University from 1980 until 1994. Dr. Walters has done extensive research and published many articles on the red-cockaded woodpeckers in North Carolina and Florida, and he chaired an American Ornithologists’
Union Conservation Committee Review that looked at the biology, status, and management of the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, a bird native to the Everglades. His research interests include cooperative breeding in birds, reproductive biology of precocial birds, primate intragroup social behavior, ecological basis of sensitivity to habitat fragmentation, kinship effects on behavior, and dispersal behavior. Dr. Walters served in two panels set up through the Sustainable Ecosystems Institute that addressed issues with endangered birds in the Everglades restoration in addition to previously serving as a member of the NRC’s Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem and the first Committee on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress. He holds a B.A. from West Virginia University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Staff
Stephanie E. Johnson, study director, is a senior program officer with the Water Science and Technology Board. Since joining the NRC in 2002, she has served as study director for 12 committees on topics such as water reuse, desalination, Chesapeake Bay nutrient management, and Everglades science. She has also worked on NRC studies on contaminant source remediation, the disposal of coal combustion wastes, and water security. Dr. Johnson received her B.A. from Vanderbilt University in chemistry and geology, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia.
David J. Policansky is a scholar and director of the Program in Applied Ecology and Natural Resources in the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. He earned a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Oregon. Dr. Policansky has directed approximately 35 NRC studies, and his areas of expertise include genetics, evolution, ecology, including fishery biology, natural resource management, and the use of science in policy making.
Michael J. Stoever is a research associate with the Water Science and Technology Board. He has worked on a number of studies including Desalination: A National Perspective, the Water Implications of Biofuels Production in the United States, and the Committee on Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration. He has also worked on NRC studies on the FEMA National Flood Insurance Program, the effect of water withdrawals on the St. Johns River, and Chesapeake Bay restoration. Mr. Stoever received his B.A. in political science from The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in Pomona, New Jersey.
Sarah E. Brennan is a senior program assistant with the Water Science and Technology Board. Since joining the NRC in 2010, she has worked on five projects including Everglades restoration progress, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ water resources, and water and environmental management in the California bay delta. Before joining WSTB, Ms. Brennan was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana, West Africa. She received her B.S. in International Development from Susquehanna University.
