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2007 SUMMER POLICY COLLOQUIUM
Speaker Biographies
Allyson K. Anderson, American Geological Institute, William Fisher congressional Science Fellow
Allyson K. Anderson is the American Geological Institute, William Fisher Congressional Science Fellow working on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for Committee Chairman Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Prior to joining the committee staff, Allyson was a Senior Petroleum Geologist (Petrophysicist) in the Formation Evaluation Core Group of the ExxonMobil Exploration Company. Her work and research was focused on reservoir characterization of deep water siliciclastic depositional systems. Previously, Allyson worked as a research scientist at the Kansas Geological Survey conducting research in the Energy Research Section focusing on hazard mitigation and prevention involving integrated remote sensing systems and traditional field geology. She earned her Master ’s degree in Geology at Indiana University (IUPUI) in 2000. Allyson has published primarily in the field of surficial processes and soil geomorphology in the mid-continent. Concurrent with her present employment, Allyson served a three-year term as President for the National Association for Women Geoscientists. She has worked extensively with non-profit professional geoscientific societies especially focusing on K-12 science outreach and recruitment/retention of women and minorities in the geosciences.
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David Arthur, Senior Analyst, Congressional Budget Office
Dr. Arthur is a Senior Analyst with the Congressional Budget Office. He has been working on assessments of the system effectiveness and budgetary implications of Department of Defense and other government investment programs. His work at CBO has encompassed a broad range of issues including overall defense budgets, long-range strike, strategic mobility, missile defense, and NASA’s plans for manned space exploration. Prior to joining CBO he was a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses where he worked on issues ranging from naval mine warfare to military space policy. He is a graduate of Stanford University with degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering.
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Chuck Atkins, Chief of Majority Staff, House Science Committee
Chuck Atkins is Democratic Staff Director of the House Committee on Science. The Committee is responsible for legislation and oversight of most Federal government civilian research and development programs. These programs include space, aeronautics, energy, transportation, basic research, math and science education, cooperative industry-government R &D and the environment. As Staff Director he serves as senior policy advisor to the Ranking Member, managing a staff of 20 professionals, including scientists, engineers and attorneys, in carrying out the oversight and legislative agenda for the Democratic Membership. He holds Top Secret and DOE “Q” security clearances.
Chuck began his service in Congress in 1993 after managing the successful campaign for former Congressman Scotty Baesler of Kentucky and serving as his Chief of Staff until 1999. In 1999 he became Chief of Staff to Congressman Bart Gordon of Tennessee. Concurrent with his Science Committee responsibilities he also serves a Chief of Staff to the Ranking Member, Rep. Bart Gordon.
In 1995 Chuck was elected and served one term as president of the House Administrative Assistants’/Chiefs’ of Staff Association, a non-partisan professional and education association of senior House staff leaders. In 1997 he was selected to serve as a John C. Tennis Center for public Service Congressional Staff Fellow for the 105th Congress.
Other career milestones include founding a community development and housing consulting firm, Atkins-Elrod and Associates in 1977. In addition to consulting, he formed real estate investment partnerships to re-develop historic properties as housing. Church also taught political science and public policy at the university level during his career as a consultant. Prior to consulting he served a Local Government Services Director for a Kentucky regional planning and development district.
He served in the United States Marine Corps from 1966-1968. His service included a tour of duty in Vietnam with the 2nd Battalion/4th Marine Regiment.
Mr. Atkins earned a B.S., with honors, from Georgia State University in 1972 with majors in Psychology and Urban Administration. He earned a M.A. in public administration from The Ohio State University in 1973.
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Kit Batten, Director of Environmental Policy, Center for American Progress
Kit Batten is the Director of Environmental Policy at the Center for American Progress. Batten is a Ph.D. ecologist who most recently joins us from the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) where she worked as a Legislative Assistant on climate change, energy, transportation, and agriculture policy. She also served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow in the office of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) where she worked on climate change legislation, energy policy, land conservation and management, fisheries policy, and Endangered Species Act reauthorization.
Batten also worked with Lieberman to investigate allegations of climate science censorship at several government agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Forest Service.
As a postdoctoral associate, Batten worked for the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) at the American Institute of Biological Sciences. At NEON, she helped design a national observation and experimentation system to explore the effects of ecological drivers such as climate change, invasive species, infectious disease, and land use change on important ecosystem services including nutrient cycling, hydrology, and biodiversity.
She received a B.A. in chemistry from Oberlin College and a M.S. and Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis. Her dissertation research focused on examining how invasive plants changed the soil microbial community in serpentine grassland and looked at impacts of these changes on native plant performance and ecosystem function.
Tegan Blaine, U.S. Department of State
Tegan recently finished her Ph.D. at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She has taken a fellowship for scientists in international policy supported by the American Institute of Physics in combination with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She will spend one year working at the State Department in Washington, D.C., in their Office of Policy Coordiation and Initiatives, as one of two sustainable development and water specialists.
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 James Bradbury, AMS-UCAR Congressional Science Fellow, on staff for Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA)
James Bradbury is the 2006/2007 American Meteorological Society/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Congressional Science Fellow. He is working in the office of Congressman Jay Inslee (WA-1) on issues related to energy, climate and environmental policy. In August 2006, James completed his doctoral work at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst (UMass), Department of Geosciences. His dissertation research examined regional hydroclimate in East Asia through global and regional-scale modeling and analyses of instrumental and paleoclimate records. He was recently a volunteer contributor to the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment report, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Before UMass, James received a Masters degree in Hydrology from the University of New Hampshire where he studied climate change in New England during the past century.
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 Lynne Carter, Co-director, Adaptation Network
Lynne Carter began her career as a marine biologist and earned advanced degrees in marine science (MS), science policy (MMA), and science education (Ph.D.) with an emphasis on climate change education. She has become a leader in communicating the urgency and the science of climate change to the public since her first workshop on the subject in 1989 as the executive director of the Center for Ocean Management Studies at the University of Rhode Island. Her goal in all her work is to help people live more sustainably and lightly on the Earth. She National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change in 1998. She has developed and taught semester long and short courses (including the first climate change course in the U.S. to combine science, society, and policy in 1991) on climate change issues for both formal education (students and faculty) and informally for the interested public and for informal educators (e.g. museums, nature centers, etc). She developed a climate change distance-learning course that was offered through the University of Maryland, has taught adult students at Vermont College, and was an invited teaching fellow at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University. Her public presentations have included most recently keynoting a Connecticut conference for coastal cities and towns. She has organized conferences and workshops on various aspects of climate change, most recently for the bi-national New England Governors' and Eastern Canadian Premiers' on likely climate impacts to natural resources. She has written and contributed to articles and reports on climate change for a variety of audiences. She is now a consultant and the co-director of the newly established Adaptation Network.
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 Brenda Ekwurzel, Union of Concerned Scientists
Brenda Ekwurzel works on the national climate program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). She is leading UCS's climate science education work aimed at strengthening support for strong federal climate legislation and sound U.S. climate policies. Prior to joining UCS, Dr. Ekwurzel was on the faculty of the University of Arizona Department of Hydrology and Water Resources with a joint appointment in the Geosciences Department. Her specialty is isotope geochemistry, a tool she has used to study climate variability in places as disparate as the Arctic Ocean and the desert Southwest. She has published on topics that include climate variability and fire, isotopic dating of groundwater, Arctic Ocean tracer oceanography, paleohydrology, and coastal sediment erosion. She has also worked as a hydrologist with the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, working with communities to protect groundwater sources. Dr. Ekwurzel completed her doctorate work at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and post-doctoral research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California
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 George M. Gray, Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, EPA
On November 1, 2005, Dr. Gray was sworn in to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Research and Development, which is the 1,900-person, $600 million science and technology arm of the Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Gray was appointed to this position by President George W. Bush and confirmed—by unanimous consent—by the U.S. Senate. Prior to joining EPA, George was Executive Director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and a Lecturer in Risk Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). In 16 years at HSPH, his researched focused on scientific bases of human health risk assessment and its application to risk policy with a focus on risk/risk tradeoffs in risk management. George taught toxicology and risk assessment to both graduate students and participants in the School’s Continuing Professional Education program. George holds a B.S. degree in biology from the University of Michigan, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in toxicology from the University of Rochester. He and his wife, Ann, and their two children make their home in McLean, Virginia.
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 Scott Gudes, Chief of Staff, Senate Committee on the Budget
In June 1998, Scott B. Gudes was named deputy under secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere for the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As NOAA's third highest ranking official, the deputy under secretary oversees the management of NOAA's seven line offices: the National Weather Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Ocean Service, NOAA Research, the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, the Office of Finance and Administration and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, as well as NOAA's Staff Offices. With employees in every U.S. state, at sea, and at many overseas locations, NOAA employs more than 12,500 people with a FY2002 Budget of more than $3.3 billion. In addition to his duties as DUS, Mr. Gudes has served as the assistant secretary/chief financial officer for the Department of Commerce from July to October 1999, as acting assistant secretary/deputy administrator of NOAA from November 1999 to June 2000, and from January to December 2001 as the acting undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere/acting NOAA administrator. NOAA is responsible for all U.S. weather and climate forecasting, monitoring and archiving of ocean and atmospheric data, management of marine fisheries and mammals, mapping and charting of all U.S. waters, coastal zone management, and research and development in all of these areas. NOAA is the largest part of the Department of Commerce and manages the U.S. operational weather and environmental satellites, a fleet of ships and aircraft for oceanographic, surveying, fisheries, coastal, and atmospheric studies, twelve environmental research laboratories, and several large supercomputers. Mr. Gudes' background and experience have kept him involved in NOAA issues for the past 17 years. He served as NOAA's budget examiner beginning in 1983 at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget until 1986 when he began a career as a Professional Staff Member for the U.S. Senate's Committee on Appropriations. While at Senate Appropriations, he worked for both political parties thus gaining a reputation for bipartisanship. In 1990, Mr. Gudes became the staff director for the Commerce, Justice and State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies Subcommittee, under whose auspices the NOAA Budget is supported. His background in Appropriations has made him an integral part and a key figure in the way NOAA presents its budget to Congress, and he is frequently called upon to brief Congressional committees and members on a great variety of NOAA science and management issues. At NOAA he is known for a focus on employees, human resource issues and a commitment to rebuilding the agency's infrastructure. Mr. Gudes was born and raised in California and studied at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, and in California, where he graduated from San Diego State University in 1976. He earned his Masters of Public Administration from California State University at Fullerton two years later. He served as a Presidential Management Intern after graduate school, working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. An avid recreational fisherman, golfer and SCUBA diver, Mr. Gudes highly values marine and coastal conservation and is a champion of NOAA's critical role as the nation's ocean resource steward.
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Jonna Hamilton, Congressional Fellow for the American Institute of Physics
Jonna Hamilton is the 2006-2007 Congressional Fellow for the American Institute of Physics. She is currently working on energy and environment issues in the office of Senator Richard J Durbin of Illinois, the Assistant Majority Leader of the Senate. During the summer of 2006, Jonna was a Fellow at the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council where she helped develop environmental indicators to be used in urban development planning and examined state land use changes. Jonna received her PhD from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University in May 2006.For her dissertation, she investigated the movement and muscle activity patterns of birds that use their wings to both fly and swim (puffins and murres) with a focus on the biomechanical constraints imposed by medium. While at Brown, she was a Fulbright Fellow to Iceland and studied the diving behavior of puffins. Prior to earning her doctorate, Jonna worked for two years as a Laboratory Specialist at the University of Virginia researching crustacean neurophysiology. She earned her Master 's Degree at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where she investigated the structure and material properties of porpoise blubber. While in graduate school, she was active in student government local politics and engaged in teaching pedagogy, both as a participant and consultant.
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 Vincent Kiernan, Assistant Dean, Georgetown School of Continuing Studies
Dr. Kiernan is in charge of the Bachelor's of Liberal Studies program, in which working adults take courses at night and on weekends toward an interdisciplinary college degree. He has been a journalist for more than 20 years. Most recently, he worked for nine years as a senior editor and senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com), a weekly trade newspaper in Washington, D.C., that covers all sorts of goings-on in academe. Dr. Kiernan was one of the information technology reporters, assigned to follow advanced-technology projects such as supercomputing. Most of his career, has been spent in journalism about science, medicine, and technology. He has been the U.S. correspondent for New Scientist, a British weekly science magazine, which dispatched him to the South Pole, among other interesting assignments; and a reporter for Space News, for which he trolled the halls of the Pentagon for news. In his pursuit of studying science journalism has walked through a nuclear reactor, seen gigantic lasers, watched the disassembly of nuclear weapons, played with DNA, witnessed a nighttime space shuttle launch, and interviewed Nobel Prize winners. He’s published two books on computer technology, "Writing Your Dissertation with Microsoft Word" and "Finding an Online High School." Besides being a working journalist, he is a scholar of journalism. In 2002, earned a doctorate in mass communication from the University of Maryland at College Park. His research examines the relationships between the media and the scientific establishment. A book based on his dissertation, "Embargoed Science," was published in August by the University of Illinois Press.
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 Eric Klinenberg, Associate Professor of Sociology New York University
Eric Klinenberg, PhD, is assistant professor of Sociology at New York University. He is the author of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2002), which received the prize for Best Book in Sociology and Anthropology from the Association of American Publishers, the Robert Park Book Award from the American Sociological Association, the Komarovsky Book Award from the Eastern Sociological Society, the Biannual Book Award from the Urban Affairs Association, the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Award from the British Sociological Association, and was a “Favorite Book” selection of the Chicago Tribune. Klinenberg is also the editor of a special volume of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on "Cultural Production in a Digital Age," and a co-editor of The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness (Duke University Press, 2001). He has published in several academic journals, as well as the London Review of Books, the Nation, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, and Slate. In addition to his research on social isolation, Klinenberg is writing a book about the state of local media in the U.S., to be published by Henry Holt.
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 Kei Koizumi, Director, R & D Budget and Policy Program, AAAS
Kei Koizumi is known as a leading authority on the federal budget, federal support for research and development, science policy issues, and R&D funding data. He is the principal budget analyst, editor, and writer for the annual AAAS reports on federal R&D and for the continually updated analyses of federal R&D on the AAAS R&D web site. He is widely quoted in the general and trade press on federal science funding issues and speaks on R&D funding trends and federal budget policy toward R&D to numerous public groups and seminars. Kei Koizumi received his M.A. from the Center for International Science, Technology, and Public Policy program at the George Washington University and received his B.A. from Boston University in Political Science and Economics.
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 Molly Macauley, Resources for the Future
Molly K. Macauley is a Senior Fellow with Resources for the Future (RFF), Washington DC. She has been Director of Academic Programs at RFF since 1996. Dr. Macauley’s research at RFF includes the areas of public finance, energy economics, regulation of toxic substances, environmental economics, advanced materials economics, and the value of information. She also focuses on economics and policy issues of outer space and the valuation of nonpriced space resources, the design of incentive arrangements to improve space resource use, and the appropriate relationship between public and private endeavors in space research, development, and commercial enterprise. Dr. Macauley has been a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, Department of Economics and at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs. Dr. Macauley has testified before congress on the Commercial Space Act of 1997, the Omnibus Space Commercialization Act of 1996, and the Space Business Incentives Act of 1996. Dr. Macauley has served on many national level committees and panels including the congressionally mandated Economic Study of Space Solar Power (chair), The National Research Council’s (NRC) Board on Physics and Astronomy, Helium Reserve Committee, the NRC Space Studies Board Steering Group on Space Applications and Commercialization, and the NRC Space Studies Board Task Force on Priorities in Space Research. Dr. Macauley has published extensively with more than 80 journal articles, books, and chapters of books. Dr. Macauley is on the Board of Directors of Women in Aerospace and the Thomas Jefferson Public Policy Program, College of William and Mary.
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 Michael MacCracken, The Climate Institute
Michael MacCracken has been Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute in Washington DC since 2002; he was also elected to its Board of Directors in 2006. Both of these positions are held on a volunteer basis. Dr. MacCracken received his B.S. in Engineering degree from Princeton University in 1964 and his Ph.D. degree in Applied Science from the University of California Davis/Livermore in 1968. His dissertation used a 2-D climate model to evaluate the plausibility of several hypotheses of the causes of ice ages. Following his graduate work, he joined the Physics Department of the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as an atmospheric physicist. His research in the ensuing 25 years included numerical modeling of various causes of climate change (including study of the potential climatic effects of greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols, land-cover change, and nuclear war) and of factors affecting air quality (including photochemical pollution in the San Francisco Bay Area and sulfate air pollution in the northeastern United States). At LLNL, he also served as division leader for atmospheric and geophysical sciences from 1987-1993 and as deputy division leader from 1974-1987. From 1993-2002, Dr. MacCracken was on assignment as senior global change scientist to the interagency Office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) in Washington D.C., also serving as its first executive director from 1993-1997. From 1997-2001, he served as executive director of the USGCRP's National Assessment Coordination Office, which coordinated the efforts of 20 regional assessment teams, 5 sectoral teams, and the National Assessment Synthesis Team (which was constituted as a federal advisory committee) that prepared the national climate impacts assessment report that was forwarded to the President and on to the Congress in late 2000. During this period with the Office of the USGCRP, Dr. MacCracken also coordinated the official U.S. Government reviews of several of the assessment reports prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and he was a co-author/contributing author for various chapters in the IPCC assessment reports. When Dr. MacCracken's assignment with the Office of the USGCRP concluded on September 30, 2002, he simultaneously retired from LLNL. In addition to his activities with the Climate Institute, he served on the integration team for the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment from 2002-2004. Dr. MacCracken is also near completing a 4-year term (2003-2007) as president of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS), members of which are the national academies of science or their equivalent in about 50 nations. As president of IAMAS, Dr. MacCracken also serves on the executive committees of International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) and the Scientific Committee for Oceanic Research (SCOR). From 2004 to 2005, he served on a panel of the Scientific Committee on Problems in the Environment that prepared a report on what is known about the likelihood and consequences of an asteroid or comet impact, and from 2004-2007 on a scientific expert group convened by Sigma Xi and the UN Foundation at the request of the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development to suggest the best measures for mitigating and adapting to global climate change. Dr. MacCracken is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the Oceanography Society, and the American Geophysical Union (AGU), among other organizations. His affidavit relating global climate change and impacts on particular regions was recently cited favorably by Justice Stevens in his opinion in the recent decision in Massachusetts et al. versus EPA.
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 The Honorable John H. Marburger, III, Science Advisor to the President, and Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy
John H. Marburger, III is the President’s Science Advisor and Director of the Office of Science and technology. Dr. Marburger is the former Director of the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and President of Brookhaven science Associates. He is presently on a leave of absence from the State University of New York at Stony Brook where he served as President and Professor from 1980 to 1994 and as a University Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering from 1994 to 1997. Dr. Marburger served as the Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California from 1976 to 1980. He has been a member of numerous professional, civic and philanthropic organizations including the Universities Research Association, the advisory Committee to the New York State Senate Committee on Higher Education and the Board of Directors of the Museums at Stony Brook. He is a graduate of Princeton University and received a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University.
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 Bryan Mignone, Brookings Institution
Mignone develops and uses numerical models to study the modern oceanic carbon cycle and its response to human perturbation over centennial timescales. He uses similar models to investigate the oceanic retention of deliberately injected carbon as a first step toward evaluating the viability of such sequestration strategies. Most recently, Mignone has been developing a descriptive bargaining model of environmental treaty-making in order to assess the feasibility of international climate change agreements.
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 Chris Mooney, Author
Chris Mooney is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and a senior correspondent for the American Prospect. He focuses on issues at the intersection of science and politics, and is author of the bestselling book The Republican War on Science, dubbed “a landmark in contemporary political reporting” by Salon.com and a “well-researched, closely argued and amply referenced indictment of the right wing’s assault on science and scientists” by Scientific American. In addition, The Republican War on Science was named a finalist for the 2005 Los Angeles Times book prize in the category of “Science and Technology,” and Chris’s 2005 Mother Jones feature story about ExxonMobil, conservative think tanks, and climate change was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the “public interest” category (as part of a cover package on global warming). Chris was born in Mesa, Arizona, and grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana; he graduated from Yale University in 1999, where he wrote a column for the Yale Daily News. Before becoming a freelance writer, Chris worked for two years at The American Prospect as a writing fellow, then staff writer, then online editor (where he helped to create the popular blog Tapped). Chris has contributed to a variety of other publications in recent years, including Wired, Seed, New Scientist, Slate, Salon, Mother Jones, Legal Affairs, Reason, The American Scholar, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. In addition, Chris’s blog, ;The Intersection,” was a recipient of Scientific American’s 2005 Science and Technology web award, which noted that “science is lucky to have such a staunch ally in acclaimed journalist Chris Mooney.” Chris speaks regularly at academic meetings, bookstores, university campuses, and other events. Recent university stops include Yale University, Princeton, Harvard, Rockefeller University, and MIT. Other venues where Chris has spoken include San Francisco’s famous Commonwealth Club, Town Hall Seattle, and acclaimed bookstores like Cody’s in Berkeley, California. Chris has also been featured regularly by the national media. He has appeared on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, CSPAN’s Book TV, Fresh Air With Terry Gross, NPR’s Science Friday (here and here), and The Al Franken Show, among many other television and radio programs. He has been profiled by The Toronto Star and The Seattle Times, and interviewed by many outlets including Grist and Mother Jones.
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Matthew Nisbet, American University
Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D., is assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University. Trained as a social scientist, he studies the nature and impacts of strategic communication. His current research tracks scientific and environmental controversies, examining the interactions between experts, journalists, and various publics. In this work, Nisbet focuses on several key questions: How does news coverage both reflect and shape policy? How do citizens make sense of controversies, and in what ways do strategists try to mold public opinion? What mobilizes citizens to get involved in a debate? He has studied a wide range of controversies including those over stem cell research, global warming, intelligent design, plant biotechnology, and hurricanes. The author or co-author of twenty research articles and book chapters, his work appears across a number of leading journals including Public Opinion Quarterly, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Communication Research, Political Communication, Political Behavior, Mass Communication and Society, Science Communication, and Public Understanding of Science. Over the past three years, these studies have been cited more than a hundred times in the peer-reviewed literature. He is a frequent invited speaker at conferences and meetings across the U.S. and Canada, and he is often called upon for his expert analysis by major news organizations, with past interviews including the BBC World Service, Nature, Science, Chronicle of Higher Education, Toronto Globe & Mail, Adweek, Houston Chronicle, Salon.com, MSNBC.com, and Wisconsin Public Radio. Nisbet has served as a consultant to the National Science Foundation, as well as other government agencies and non-governmental organizations. He holds an A.B. in Government from Dartmouth College, and an MS/Ph.D. in Communication from Cornell University.
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Dr. Michael Slimak is an associate director in EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment. He is primarily responsible for developing and implementing an assessment program to understand risks associated with global climate change, chemical pollutants, habitat and biodiversity loss, and invasive species. Dr. Slimak has been with EPA for over 27 years and has worked in a number of programs. He has been directly involved with the CCSP and USGCRP since its inception in 1990. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, an MS in Wildlife Ecology, and a BS in Biology.
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Tobin L. Smith, (Toby) Associate Director of Federal Relations at the Association of American Universities (AAU)
In this position, Toby is responsible for overseeing physical sciences and engineering research and has closely monitored budgets and programs at the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Toby is currently responsible for issues relating to innovation and national competitiveness. He shares responsibility for monitoring several key science policy issues for AAU including export controls, technology transfer, and costs of research among other things. Prior to joining the AAU in January 2003, Toby was the Director of Federal Relations for Research for the University of Michigan. From 1992-1999 he served as Federal Relations Representative and Assistant Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Washington D.C. Office. From 1988 to 1992, Tobin served as a legislative assistant to Congressman Bob Traxler (D-Michigan). Representing universities, Toby has developed and coordinated university federal relations activities and legislative and executive branch strategies across a wide range of science policy issues. He has also maintained regular interactions with key policy makers on Capitol Hill, in the White House and within the federal science and research agencies including the NIH, NSF, NASA, and the Departments of Energy, Defense and Homeland Security. Toby has written and spoken widely on science policy and funding issues. He is a regular contributor to the AAAS Intersociety Working Group Annual Report on the R&D budget having written or co-written the NSF chapter for the last four years. He is the co-author of a soon to be published book, Beyond Sputnik – National Science Policy in the 21st Century, expected to be released by the University of Michigan Press early next year. He especially enjoys speaking to scientists and engineers about how they can more effectively work and communicate with members of Congress. He holds a Masters Degree in Arts of Legislative Affairs from George Washington University, and a Bachelor Degree in General Studies from the University of Michigan.
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 David Verardo, National Science Foundation
Dave is currently the Director of the Paleoclimate Program in the Division of Atmospheric Sciences at the National Science Foundation. He has held this position for the last seven years. Previously, Dave was Deputy Director for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry; AAAS Congressional Science Fellow in the Office of US Senator Ron Wyden; and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. Dave served for six years in the US Coast Guard. Dave holds a PhD in Earth & Environmental Sciences from the City University of New York and a BA in Geology from Long Island University. He is currently completing a JD from Concord Law School.
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