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Biographical Sketches of Committee Members
PAUL S. PEERCY (Co-Chair) is a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where until 2013 he had served as dean of the College of Engineering. He came to the university in September 1999 from SEMI/SEMATECH, where he had been president since 1995. Before that, he was director of the Microelectronics and Photonics R&D Core Competency at Sandia National Laboratories. His research interests include phase transitions in solids, ferroelectricity, Raman and Brillouin scattering studies of solids, ion–solid interactions, laser-induced phase transformations, microelectronics and photonics, and solid state devices. He is the author or coauthor of more than 185 technical papers and holds two patents. Dr. Peercy is a distinguished member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society; a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Physical Society (APS), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE); and a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1966. He was a member of the 2012-2013 NRC Committee to Review the Quality of the Management and of the Science and Engineering Research at the Department of Energy National Security Laboratories—Phase II.
JILL P. DAHLBURG (Co-Chair) is superintendent of the Space Science Division at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and a member of the Senior Executive Service since December 2007. Dr. Dahlburg served as NRL senior scientist for science applications from June 2003 to December
2007. From 2001 to mid-2003, she left NRL to work for General Atomics as the director of the Division of Inertial Fusion Technology and codirector of the Theory and Computing Center. In 2000, she served as head of the NRL Tactical Electronic Warfare Division Distributed Sensor Technology Office, where she was co-principal investigator for the first year of development of the small, expendable unmanned aerial vehicle Dragon Eye, which saw active duty in Iraq. Dr. Dahlburg holds a B.A. (1978) from St. John’s College in Annapolis and an M.S. in physics (1980) and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics (1985) from the College of William and Mary. A fellow of the APS, she has served as chair of the APS Division of Plasma Physics, chair of the APS Topical Group on Energy Research and Applications, chair of the APS Panel on Public Affairs, and chair of the APS Mid-Atlantic Section. She also served as a member of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Defense and Nuclear Technologies Director’s Review Committee (2001-2007), chair of the Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee (2005-2007), and chair of the Department of the Navy’s Space Experiments Review Board (2006-pres-ent). She was a member of the 2012-2013 NRC Committee to Review the Quality of the Management and of the Science and Engineering Research at the Department of Energy National Security Laboratories—Phase II.
JOHN F. AHEARNE is executive director emeritus of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society; emeritus director of the Sigma Xi Ethics Program; and an adjunct professor of engineering at Duke University. Before working at Sigma Xi, Dr. Ahearne served as vice president and senior fellow at Resources for the Future and as commissioner and chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A member of the NAE, he has been in the White House Energy Office and served as deputy assistant secretary of energy. He also worked on weapons systems analysis, force structure, and personnel policy as deputy and principal deputy assistant secretary of defense. Serving in the U.S. Air Force, he worked on nuclear weapons effects and taught at the Air Force Academy. Dr. Ahearne’s research interests include risk analysis, risk communication, energy analysis, reactor safety, radioactive waste, nuclear weapons, materials disposition, science policy, and environmental management. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1966. He was a member of the 2012-2013 NRC Committee to Review the Quality of the Management and of the Science and Engineering Research at the Department of Energy National Security Laboratories—Phase II.
MICHAEL R. ANASTASIO was, until June 2011, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and president of Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the company that manages and operates LANL. He was
previously director of LLNL from 2002 until 2006. Dr. Anastasio holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Johns Hopkins University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in theoretical nuclear physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His career at LLNL began in 1980 as a physicist in B-Division, one of the two nuclear weapons design divisions. He participated in the development of the W87, W84, and B83 warheads and with 10 nuclear tests; he was project physicist on four of these tests. In 1991, he was made B-Division leader and program manager responsible for primary weapons design. From 1996 to 2001, he served as associate director for Defense and Nuclear Technologies, responsible for all activities in the laboratory’s nuclear weapons program. In that capacity, he was instrumental in the development and execution of the national Stockpile Stewardship Program. From 2001 to 2002, Dr. Anastasio served as LLNL’s deputy director for strategic operations. He received the DOE’s Weapons Recognition of Excellence Award in 1990 and the DOE/NNSA Gold Medal in 2011. He is a member of the U.S. Strategic Command’s Strategic Advisory Group, the Defense Science Board, the Draper Laboratory Corporation, and the boards of Los Alamos National Security, LLC, and Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. He was a member of the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise.
CHRISTINA A. BACK is the advanced nuclear materials leader at General Atomics and an experimental physicist with expertise in radiation in high-energy-density plasmas. She received her B.S. in physics from Yale University in 1984 and her Ph.D. in plasma physics from the University of Florida in 1989. After a 2-year postdoc with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the Ecole Polytechnique in France, she spent 13 years at LLNL in the Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) and HEDS programs, specializing in the study of radiation transport and spectroscopy. In addition to serving on committees of the NRC and the APS, she is an APS fellow and has served that society as a general councilor. Currently, she is target production coordinator and radiation physics manager at General Atomics, where she is responsible for identifying new opportunities for target fabrication advances in high-energy-density physics (HEDP) as well as conducting research to develop novel radiation sources for lithographic and other applications. With her knowledge of experimental methods and target requirements, she interfaces closely with colleagues in the national and international ICF and HEDP research programs. She was a member of the 2012-2013 NRC Committee to Review the Quality of the Management and of the Science and Engineering Research at the Department of Energy National Security Laboratories—Phase II.
JOHN M. CORNWALL is professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he conducts theoretical research on elementary particles. He is an inventor of the pinch technique and coauthor of the 2011 book The Pinch Technique and Applications to Non-Abelian Gauge Theories. A member of JASON, Professor Cornwall has a long history of interactions with, and service to, the NNSA laboratories, including as long-time chair of the LLNL nuclear weapons review committee and with the NNSA Predictive Science Panel.
PAUL A. FLEURY is the Frederick W. Beinecke Professor of Engineering and Applied Physics and professor of physics at Yale University, where he also serves as director of the Yale Institute for Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1965 and was employed at Bell Laboratories from 1965 until 1996, spending a portion of that period as a vice president at Sandia National Laboratories. Following his time at Sandia, Professor Fleury served as dean of the School of Engineering at the University of New Mexico (1996-2000) and then dean of engineering at Yale (2000-2007). His research has been in experimental condensed matter physics and materials science. A member of the NAE and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), he is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the AAAS. He received the Michaelson Morley prize (1985) and the Frank Isakson prize for optical effects in solids (1992) from the APS.
DAVID HAMMER is the J. Carlton Ward Professor of Nuclear Energy Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University. He has been a Cornell faculty member since 1977. Dr. Hammer worked at NRL from 1969 to 1976, was a visiting associate professor (part-time) at the University of Maryland from 1973 to 1976, and was an associate professor at UCLA in 1977. He spent sabbatical leaves from Cornell in 1983-1984, 1991, and 2004 as a visiting senior fellow at Imperial College, London, in 1998 at Applied Materials, Inc.; and in 2011 at the Paris Observatory in France. His research interests are in high-energy-density plasmas, especially as it relates to inertial confinement fusion.
CHERRY A. MURRAY is dean of Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences; and professor of physics. Dr. Murray served as principal associate director for science and technology at LLNL from 2004 until 2009 and was APS president in 2009. Before joining LLNL, she was senior vice president of physical sciences and wireless
research at Bell Laboratories Research, where she worked for 27 years. A member of both NAS and NAE, she has served on more than 100 national and international scientific advisory committees, governing boards, and NRC committees and as a member of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Until January 2014, she chaired the NRC’s Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences. As an experimentalist, Dr. Murray is known for her scientific accomplishments in condensed matter and surface physics. She received her B.S. in 1973 and her Ph.D. in physics in 1978 from MIT. She has published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals and holds two patents in near-field optical data storage and optical display technology.
DAVID OVERSKEI is the founder and president of Decision Factors, Inc., which has provided strategic and management consulting on complex problems since 2004. Dr. Overskei has led internationally recognized fundamental and applied research teams in academia and private industry in topics related to defense, national security, energy technologies, medical systems, optical and wireless communications, and advanced software for command and control. He chaired the Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task Force of the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board. The task force was responsible for a major analysis of the facilities, personnel, and management skills required through 2030 to sustain a reliable and safe nuclear deterrent in a cost-effective manner. He has performed numerous studies for DOE on problems related to managing new technology programs, and he routinely advises the Department of Defense and U.S. allies on questions related to nuclear warhead maintenance and supply needs. He has served for the past 6 years on the Programme Advisory Committee for the Atomic Weapons Establishment in the U.K., and he served on the recent NRC study on the Assessment of the Governance Structure of the NNSA National Security Laboratories.
K. LEE PEDDICORD is director of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station, senior associate dean for research, and professor of nuclear engineering at Texas A&M University. His areas of research include behavior of nuclear fuels, reactor systems and design, fissile materials disposition, MOX fuels, Generation IV nuclear power systems, nuclear-generated hydrogen, the hydrogen economy, and the nuclear workforce. He received his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois in 1972. Professor Peddicord was a member of the 2012-2013 NRC Committee to Review the Quality of the Management and of the Science and Engineering Research at the Department of Energy National Security Laboratories––Phase II.
ROBERT SELDEN is a private consultant in defense science and research management. He retired in 1993 as an associate director at LANL. His career in the nuclear weapons laboratories began at LLNL in the 1960s when he was one of the two participants in the Nth Country Experiment to design a nuclear explosive from unclassified information. After moving to LANL in 1979, he served as the division leader of the Applied Theoretical Physics Division, as associate director for theoretical and computational physics, and as the first director of the Los Alamos Center for National Security Studies. Dr. Selden served as the chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force from 1988 to 1991, when he received the Air Force Association’s Theodore von Karman Award for outstanding contributions to defense science and technology. He has been a member of the Strategic Advisory Group to the Commander of the United States Strategic Command since 1995. Since 2003 he has served as chairman of the Advisory Group’s Stockpile Assessment Team, which has the responsibility for conducting a detailed annual review of the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile. He also is currently a member of the Joint Advisory Committee on Nuclear Surety to the Secretaries of Defense and Energy, and he served on the recent NRC study on the Assessment of the Governance Structure of the NNSA National Security Laboratories. He was a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board from 1984 to 2005. Dr. Selden received his B.A. degree from Pomona College, Claremont, California, in 1958 and his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1964.
STEVEN J. ZINKLE is the Governor’s Chair Professor in the University of Tennessee’s Nuclear Engineering Department, a position he took in 2013 after a long career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Dr. Zinkle received a B.S. degree in nuclear engineering, M.S. degrees in materials science and nuclear engineering, and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His specialties are the physical metallurgy of structural materials; the effects of ion and neutron irradiation on the microstructure, physical properties, and mechanical properties of metals and ceramics; transmission electron microscopy; and fusion and space fission reactor materials studies. Dr. Zinkle worked in the ORNL Metals and Ceramics Division since 1985, rising to become an ORNL corporate fellow, director of the Materials Science and Technology Division, and chief scientist for the Nuclear Science and Engineering Directorate. A member of the NAE, he is the author or co-author of more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific articles and is a fellow of seven professional societies, including APS, the Materials Research Society, the American Nuclear Society and the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society.
