Attachment B
Biographies of the Committee Members
Paul Gaffney (NAE), Chair, is the president of Monmouth University. A retired Navy vice admiral, he served as president of the National Defense University from 2000 to 2003. Prior to assuming those duties, he was the Chief of Naval Research with responsibility for science and technology investment, a substantial part of which supported basic research in U.S. universities. He was appointed to the U.S. Ocean Policy Commission in July 2001 and served during its full tenure, from 2001 to 2004. President Gaffney’s distinguished naval career spanned more than three decades and included duty at sea, overseas, and ashore in executive and command positions. He served in Japan, Vietnam, Spain, and Indonesia and traveled extensively in official capacities. While he was a military officer, his career focused on oceanography. President Gaffney is a 1968 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. Upon graduation, he was selected for immediate graduate education and received a master’s degree in ocean engineering from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He completed a year as a student and advanced research fellow at the Naval War College, graduating with highest distinction. He completed an M.B.A. at Jacksonville University. The University of South Carolina, Jacksonville University, and Catholic University have awarded him honorary doctorates. He has been recognized with a number of military decorations and the Naval War College’s J. William Middendorf Prize for Strategic Research. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and chair of the federal Ocean Research/Resources Advisory Panel. He is a trustee of Meridian Health and a director of Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc.
Philip Beauchamp manages the Mechanical Systems-Performance Lab at the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York. His laboratory is in part focused on research and development of hydromechanical devices for GE. In this regard he has participated internally with GE Energy and GE Water and also with numerous external organizations in tracking a wide range of emerging ocean energy technologies. Dr. Beauchamp holds an M.S. degree in numerical methods from the University of Arizona, an M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Boston University.
Michael Beck is a senior scientist with the Global Marine Initiative of the Nature Conservancy and a research associate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He works in the interface between marine science and policy. His present work includes research on marine regional planning, the nursery role of nearshore habitats such as kelp forests, tools for ecosystem-based management and land-sea integration, the conservation and restoration of nearshore habitats including shellfish reefs and beds, and marine proprietary rights including the lease and ownership of submerged lands. Dr. Beck holds B.A. and M.S. degrees in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in biological sciences from Florida State University.
Valerie Browning is the owner, senior consultant, and subject-matter expert for ValTech Solutions, LLC. She serves as a subject-matter expert for a number of government activities for
the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy, and other government agencies in the areas of advanced materials and alternative energy. Prior to forming ValTech Solutions, LLC, in December 2007, Dr. Browning served as a program manager in the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). During her tenure at DARPA, she assumed full responsibility for the strategic planning, operating management, and leadership and development of multiple DOD research and development programs providing innovative technologies in power and energy, radar, telecommunications, and biotechnology for diagnostics, therapeutics, and chemical and biological warfare defense. Specific programs that Dr. Browning managed include the MetaMaterials, Palm Power, Direct Thermal to Electric Conversion, Negative Index Materials, Robust Portable Power Systems, and BioMagnetic Interfacing Concepts Programs. She also served as the DARPA liaison to the DOD Integrated Product Team on Energy Security and served as acting DSO director prior to her departure from government service. In addition to her time at DARPA, Dr. Browning spent 16 of her 24 years of government service as a research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory. Her primary areas of research were thermoelectric materials, high-temperature superconductors, and magnetic oxide materials. When leaving her government position, Dr. Browning was awarded the Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Public Service. She has published more than 40 peer-reviewed manuscripts including three book chapters. She is active in a number of professional organizations including the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society (MRS), and Sigma Xi. Dr. Browning served as co-chair for a 2007 MRS symposium on magnetic materials and was the technical program committee chair for the 2008 Fuel Cell Seminar. She continues to serve on the Technical Program Committee for the Fuel Cell Seminar and Exposition and was appointed a member of the National Materials Advisory Board in 2009. Additionally, she served as a committee member on the recently completed National Research Council report entitled Seeing Photons: Progress and Limits of Visible and Infrared Sensor Arrays.
Christopher Garrett (NAS) is the Lansdowne Professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Victoria. His background is in applied mathematics and fluid dynamics. His research emphasis has been primarily on theoretical studies of small-scale processes such as waves, tides, turbulent dispersion and mixing, air-sea interaction, and the dynamics of flows in straits. His research highlights include the following: discovery of the conservation of wave action, or energy divided by intrinsic frequency, rather than energy; explaining the world’s highest tides in the Bay of Fundy in terms of resonance at 13.3 hours of the Fundy/Maine system; providing simple models for the ubiquitous internal waves in the ocean; unraveling some of the hydraulics of the exchange flow through the Strait of Gibraltar; using the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea as test basins for learning about air-sea fluxes; and finding simple ways of understanding the complicated fluid dynamics of turbulent, rotating, stratified motions near the sloping sides of ocean basins. He has also contributed to assessments of the oceanic disposal of radioactive and other wastes and to issues of ocean energy, such as the prediction of iceberg trajectory for the Canadian offshore oil industry and the derivation of fundamental limits to tidal power as well as evaluation of its environmental impact. Dr. Garrett holds B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in physical oceanography from the University of Cambridge. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Annette Grilli is a research assistant professor of ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island. She earned a Ph.D. in climatology in 2000 from the University of Delaware, an M.S. in physical oceanography from the University of Liège (Belgium) in 1984, a B.S. in geography from the University of Liège in 1983 (summa cum laude), and a B.S. in education from the University of Liège in 1983. Her professional experience started with her service as an assistant in Regional Geography at the University of Liège, working on identifying indices of economic and social crises in rural areas, using multivariate spatial statistical analysis. She then moved to the University of Delaware, earning her Ph.D. in climatology in modeling the albedo of the ocean surface as a function of sea state. While finishing her Ph.D., she worked as a consultant in environmental science and engineering and as a research scientist for Applied Science Associates, Inc. (Narragansett, Rhode Island), on various environmental modeling projects. After a few years as research scientist in the Department of Ocean Engineering at the University of Rhode Island, in 2005 Dr. Grilli joined the faculty and has since been working on a variety of ocean renewable energy projects—for example, the siting in Rhode Island of Energetech’s Oscillating Water Column wave energy plant (now Oceanlinx, Australia), the conceptual development and modeling of point absorber autonomous buoys, and the siting of a wind farm in Rhode Island waters, including siting optimization in terms of resources, technical, and ecological factors. The latter two projects are still active.
J. Andrew Hamilton is a research engineer with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. His research interests include the harvesting of ocean wave energy for oceanographic and renewable energy applications, as well as marine hydrodynamics. He is currently developing a free-swimming ocean platform that can harvest energy from the ocean environment to provide at-sea recharging for autonomous vehicles. He is also an associate editor of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, an American Institute of Physics publication. Dr. Hamilton holds an M.S. degree in ocean engineering and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Tuba Ozkan-Haller is an associate professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. Her interests include numerical, field, and analytical investigations of water motions in the nearshore zone, defined by water depth on the order of 10 m or less. Dr. Ozkan-Haller has special interest in the application of numerical models for predicting nearshore circulation as well as the modeling of bathymetric change due to this circulation field. Verification of the results is carried out using field and laboratory data. Dr. Ozkan-Haller holds an M.C.E. and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Delaware.
Elizabeth Fanning Philpot is a principal research engineer at Research and Technology Management, Research and Environmental Affairs, Southern Company. She has managed a variety of research projects in the following strategic areas: energy policy and economic analysis, environmental research, environmental regulation, strategic implementation, energy production, and energy delivery and use. Her focus now is the defining of renewable energy resources within the Southern Company footprint and evaluating renewable energy technologies that might be applicable to the Southern Company. She was the project manager for Southern Company on the “Southern Winds” project, which was a joint Southern Company-Georgia Institute of Technology project looking into the feasibility of offshore wind generation along the
Georgia coast. She is currently working on an interim lease application to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement for the placement of an offshore meteorological tower. She also worked with the Electric Power Research Institute to define the ocean resources within the Southern Company footprint and to evaluate technologies that might be applicable for the existing resource.
Bhakta Rath (NAE) is the head of the Materials Science and Component Technology Directorate at the Naval Research Laboratory. In his current position, Dr. Rath manages a multidisciplinary research program to discover and exploit new and improved materials, generate new concepts associated with materials behavior, and develop advanced components based on these new and improved materials and concepts. Scientists in this directorate perform theoretical and experimental research to determine the scientific origins of materials behavior and to develop procedures for modifying these materials to meet naval needs for advanced platforms, electronics, sensors, and photonics. Dr. Rath earned an M.S. in metallurgy from Michigan Technological University and received his Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1961. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Rath has received a number of honors and awards, including the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award and the National Materials Advancement Award from the Federation of Materials Societies (2001).
Raymond Schmitt is a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where he has spent most of his career. His research interests include oceanic mixing and microstructure, double-diffusive convection, the thermohaline circulation, oceanic freshwater budgets, the salinity distribution and its measurement, the use of acoustics for imaging fine structure, and the development of instrumentation. He is also interested in the intergenerational problem of sustaining long-term observations for climate. Dr. Schmitt has served on ocean sciences and polar program panels with the National Science Foundation, the Ocean Observing System Development Panel, the Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Science Steering Group, and the Ocean Studies Board. He was named a J.S. Guggenheim Fellow in 1997 and has authored or co-authored more than 75 publications. Dr. Schmitt earned his Ph.D. in physical oceanography from the University of Rhode Island and his B.S. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University.
James Thomson is an assistant professor of environmental fluid dynamics at the University of Washington. After completing a Ph.D. in Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program, he joined the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory in 2006. Dr. Thomson studies waves and currents in the coastal ocean, with an emphasis on field measurements and physical processes. As a member of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center, he is developing techniques to select and monitor sites for tidal energy development. He was raised on the coast of Maine and worked in the sailing industry there prior to beginning a career in physical oceanography.
Larry Weber is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research at the University of Iowa. His research interests are in fish-passage facilities, physical modeling, river hydraulics, hydropower, computational hydraulics,
and ice mechanics, including the following: combining hydrodynamic data and biological data of fish response, applying computational fluids dynamics codes to natural river reaches and hydraulic structures, fundamental principles of plunging jets, and combining open-channel flows. Dr. Weber holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Iowa.
Zhaoqing Yang is a senior research scientist in the Coastal and Watershed Processes Modeling Group of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL) Marine Sciences Laboratory. Dr. Yang’s primary research focuses on the numerical modeling of hydrodynamic and transport processes in estuarine and coastal waters, reservoirs and river systems. He is currently leading the development of PNNL’s high-resolution hydrodynamic and transport model and operational forecast system of Puget Sound and Northwest Straits. Dr. Yang has conducted many modeling studies on coastal ocean circulation, estuarine tidal dynamics, nearshore wetland restoration, water quality, sediment and fate transport, and effects of climate changes and sea-level rise on nearshore habitat. He also applied three-dimensional hydrodynamic and transport models to simulate the temperature stratification, circulation patterns, and suspended sediment transport in reservoirs and river systems to help the design of a fish collection facility, sediment cleanup decisions, and source control in connection with total maximum daily loads. Dr. Yang also has extensive experience in computational fluid dynamics modeling, groundwater modeling, ocean engineering, and river flood and management analysis. Currently, Dr. Yang is leading the model development to assess the impacts of marine and hydrokinetic renewable energy devices on coastal and estuarine systems. He holds an M.S. degree in ocean engineering from the University of Rhode Island and a Ph.D. in physical oceanography from the College of William and Mary.
