Appendix J
Committee Biographies
Kirsi K. Tikka (NAE) (Chair) is currently the independent non-executive director of Ardmore Shipping and Pacific Basin Shipping. She is actively involved in environmental regulatory and policy development for shipping as a member of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects’ Committee for the International Maritime Organization.
Dr. Tikka has more than 30 years of shipping experience having recently retired from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) in July 2019. She joined ABS in 2001 and held various specialist and leadership positions, including executive vice president, global marine; Europe division president; and vice president and chief engineer, global. Her most recent ABS role was as executive vice president, senior maritime advisor, where she was responsible for aligning ABS strategic planning, client development, and product and service offerings with the industry’s technical needs and requirements. She introduced and sponsored the environmental, harsh environment, and sustainability programs in ABS. She also represented ABS in the International Association of Classification Societies and was involved in the development of the Common Structural Rules for Tankers and Bulk Carriers.
From 1996 to 2001, Dr. Tikka was a professor of naval architecture at the Webb Institute in New York, where she was also awarded an honorary doctorate in 2018. In addition to teaching, she carried out research on prevention of oil pollution from shipping, tanker structural strength, and risk analysis, as well as being actively involved in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine studies on double hull tankers. She served on the National Research Council’s Marine Board Committee that produced the 1998 report Double Hull Tanker Legislation: An Assessment of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and chaired the committee that produced the 2001 report Environmental Performance of Tanker Designs in Collision and Grounding: Method for Comparison. Dr. Tikka also worked for Chevron Shipping in San Francisco and Wärtsilä Shipyards in Finland. She joined Chevron at the time when the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was being legislated, and she performed studies to evaluate its impact on tanker design and construction.
Dr. Tikka holds a doctorate in naval architecture and offshore engineering from the University of California, Berkeley (1989), and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Technology in Helsinki (1981). She is a fellow of both the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) and the Royal Institution of Naval Architects. In 2012, she received SNAME’s David W. Taylor Medal, the highest technical honor for naval architecture or marine engineering in the United States. Dr. Tikka is a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering, and she serves on the University of California, Berkeley, Engineering Advisory Board.
Edwin “Ed” Levine (Vice Chair) is recently retired and is now the managing officer of Scientific Support & Coordination, LLC. Prior to retirement, he served as the regional operations supervisor—East for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Office of Response and Restoration’s Emergency Response Division, managing the Scientific Support Coordinators (SSCs) from Maine to Louisiana.
From 1987 to 2015, he served as the SSC for the coastal area from Connecticut to Delaware. He has responded to several hundred incidents at the request of federal, state, and international officials, including working in Louisiana on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and in Alaska on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. These responses ranged from crude through refined oil, to chemicals, and even floatable debris in the New York Bight. The more noteworthy incidents in this area were the Exxon Bayway pipeline failure and spill, T/V Presidenté Rivera and T/V World Prodigy tanker spills, T/B Cibro Savannah explosion and spill, the C/V Santa Clara I arsenic trioxide release, T/B North Cape and Julie N oil spills, and the B-125 barge explosion, fire and gasoline spill. Internationally, he has traveled to Uruguay, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, China, Korea, England, Canada, Spain, and
Portugal for both planning and response activities. He worked on-scene at the oil spill from the T/V Jessica in the Galapagos Islands, T/V Prestige in Spain, and the Mt Hebei Spirit in Korea. During the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Mr. Levine assisted the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) in New York City on environmental, response, and security issues. He has responded with the USCG to potential radiological and biological threats, as well as to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ike, and Sandy.
The awards Mr. Levine has received include the USCG Meritorious Achievement Award (December 2019 and July 2004), USCG Certificates of Merit (May 2005, March 2004, and April 2000), the USCG Meritorious Team Commendations (November 2004 and March 2003), USCG Commander’s Award for Civilian Service (August 1990), NOAA Certificate of Recognition (1995 and 1993), the U.S. Department of Transportation 9-11 Ribbon (September 2005), and the NOAA Administrators Award (2010).
As part of the contingency planning effort, Mr. Levine has helped review and comment on the Area Contingency Plans for the Coast Guard Captain of the Ports of Long Island Sound, New York City, and Philadelphia. He is also an advising member to the Regional Response Teams for Federal Regions I, II, and III.
Mr. Levine received his M.S. in marine sciences from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus (1981).
Akua Asa-Awuku is an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. She earned her M.S. in chemical engineering from the same institution in 2006 and received her B.S. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003. In 2008, Dr. Asa-Awuku served as a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies and the Department of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr. Asa-Awuku’s primary research interest is understanding and predicting aerosol sources and interactions with water. She is an expert in the physical and chemical characterization, fate, and transport of airborne nanoparticles. Her research explores the transformation of aerosol as it pertains to indoor and outdoor fuels and combustion sources. She has served as a panelist for the National Research Council’s Research Associateship Program.
Cynthia Beegle-Krause is an interdisciplinary scientist committed to improving oil spill response and outcomes. She last served as a senior scientist at SINTEF Ocean, in Trondheim, Norway. She is also a full member of the International Oil Spill Control Organization. Her background is primarily in physical oceanography and biology. At SINTEF Ocean, she has been involved in a variety of projects related to oil spills from experimental field work in the Svalbard Archipelago. With funding from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, she led projects developing improvements for modeling oil spills, such as calculating the dissolved oxygen consumption from the biodegradation of oil droplets and using Bayesian methods to find submerged and sunken oil. While working at a nonprofit in Seattle, Washington, she provided expert testimony for the Gitxaala Nation in Canada to the Canadian government regarding the risks of potential diluted bitumen (dilbit) spills. She was a lead oil spill response modeler in a previous position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Office of Response and Restoration and one of the original developers on the GNOME (General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment) suite. She was also involved in Oil in the Sea III. Dr. Beegle-Krause holds a Ph.D. in physical oceanography from the University of Washington, an M.S. in physical oceanography from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a B.S. in biology from the California Institute of Technology.
Victoria Broje is an internationally recognized specialist with 20 years of experience in environmental science and emergency planning and response. She received her master’s degree in offshore engineering from the Saint-Petersburg State Technical University in Russia, where she specialized in oil spill behavior under Arctic conditions. She received her doctoral degree in environmental science and management from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation was focused on mechanical recovery of oil spills and resulted in a patented technology that later won the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X-Challenge. Since 2006 Dr. Broje has been supporting Shell businesses worldwide as a subject-matter expert for spill response technologies and environmental impacts assessments. She also leads an Environmental Unit Network providing oil spill response training to Shell staff. Dr. Broje represents Shell at the American Petroleum Institute (API), the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association committees developing best practices in emergency response and environmental protection. She is a chair of the Board of the Clean Caribbean and Americas, a nonprofit organization dedicated to outreach on spill response and environmental protection topics. She also chairs the API Science and Technology Working Group for oil spill prevention and response. In 2013 Dr. Broje served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee that produced A Review of Genwest’s Final Report on Effective Daily Recovery Capacity (EDRC): A Letter Report.
Steven Buschang has more than 25 years of experience working in the environmental sector along the Texas coast. Mr. Buschang began his career collecting much of the original data he still works with and oversees. The associated Minerals Management Service grant involved coordinating
the accumulation of these data and the development of the first comprehensive geographic information system–Environmental Sensitivity Index biological data layer for the entire Texas coast. These data populate the state spill response atlas, commonly known as the Texas General Land Office (TGLO) Oil Spill Planning and Response Toolkit, a geospatial operational tool for oil spill response.
Mr. Buschang now works for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, but during his service on this committee he served on this committee he was TGLO’s director of research and development and state Scientific Support Coordinator (SSC) overseeing an annual budget of more than $2 million, much of which is a dedicated funding stream for oil spill–related science research undertaken by Texas institutes of higher education.
Mr. Buschang earned a B.S. at Southwest Texas State University in marine biology and a master’s degree from Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi in environmental science, where he later taught as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, instructing both undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental regulation and environmental assessment.
Dagmar Schmidt Etkin has 45 years of experience in environmental analysis—14 years investigating issues in population biology and ecological systems and 31 years specializing in the analysis of oil spills. Since 1999, Dr. Etkin has been the president of Environmental Research Consulting (ERC), specializing in environmental risk assessment, spill response and cost analyses, and expert witness research and testimony related to oil spills. ERC’s work focuses on providing regulatory agencies and industry with sound scientific data and perspectives for responsible environmental decision-making and risk assessment. Dr. Etkin has a broad range of experience related to oil spills, including environmental and socioeconomic impacts; oil behavior; oil spill costs; analysis of response strategies; and development of models of oil spill costs, environmental impacts, spill response, vessel traffic and spill risk, crude-by-rail risk, and well blowout probability.
She has been a consultant to numerous government agencies, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration, the Maritime Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, Environment Canada, the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Washington State Department of Ecology, the Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, the Minnesota Department of Commerce/Natural Resources, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Louisiana Office of Coastal Protection and Response, Plaquemines Parish (Louisiana), Mobile County (Alabama). Dr. Etkin has also been a consultant to the oil industry, including the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil Upstream Research, SeaRiver Maritime, BP Shipping, Shell Oil, Woodside Energy Australia, Mitsubishi Tanker, Pipeline Research Council International, the American Salvage Association, Castrol Marine, Chevron Pipeline, Enbridge, Norbulk Shipping, Taylor Energy, and Cape Wind Associates. She has also consulted for nongovernmental organizations, including Scenic Hudson, Inc., World Wildlife Fund Canada, and the Cook Inlet Citizens Regional Advisory Council.
Dr. Etkin received her B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester (1977), her M.A. in biology from Harvard University (1980), and her Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University (1982).
John Farrington is a dean emeritus at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), with expertise in marine chemistry and biogeochemistry. He joined WHOI in 1971 as a postdoctoral investigator. He held successive positions in the Department of Chemistry for 17 years and simultaneously served for 6 years as the director of the WHOI Coastal Research Center. He was the Michael P. Walsh Professor in the Environmental Sciences Program, at the University of Massachusetts Boston from 1988 to 1990. He returned to WHOI in 1990 as the dean of graduate studies and then the vice president for academic programs and the dean until November 2005, retiring in early 2006. He served as the interim dean of the School of Marine Science and Technology from 2009 to 2011 and as the interim provost during 2012 at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. His research interests include marine organic geochemistry, biogeochemistry of organic chemicals of environmental concern, and the interaction between science and policy. He has served on committees and panels for international, national, and local organizations, including the UNESCO-Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; the National Science Foundation; the Office of Naval Research; and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Dr. Farrington served as a member of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Research Board. He has participated on seven National Academies consensus studies, chairing three, and has been a member on the National Academies’ Environmental Studies Board, the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, and the Marine Board. He is a Lifetime National Associate of the National Academies. Dr. Farrington holds a B.S. and an M.S. in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island.
Julia Foght is a professor emerita at the University of Alberta, Canada, where she was a professor of petroleum microbiology in the Department of Biological Sciences from 1994 to 2014. Her expertise focuses on metagenomics of hydrocarbon-degrading microbial communities, biodeg-
radation of petroleum hydrocarbons, fundamental studies on mechanisms of hydrocarbon transport across bacterial membranes, the use of whole-cell biocatalysts for biological upgrading of petroleum and refined products, and isolation and characterization of cold-adapted bacterial communities that live underneath glaciers. She received the Petro-Canada Young Innovators Award in 2001, a McCalla Professorship in 2011 from the University of Alberta, and the Alberta Science & Technology Foundation Award in Innovation in Oil Sands Research in 2014. She co-wrote the report The Behaviour and Environmental Impacts of Crude Oil Released into Aqueous Environments with the Royal Society of Canada in November 2015. Dr. Foght received her Ph.D. in environmental microbiology from the University of Alberta.
Bernard D. Goldstein (NAM) is the emeritus dean and an emeritus professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and has chaired more than a dozen National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committees. He has also chaired committees related to environmental health for the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. His past experience includes service as the assistant administrator for research and development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1983–1985) and the president of the Society for Risk Analysis. His involvement in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill includes serving as an Advisory Board member of the National Academies’ Gulf Research Program and as the original chair of the Coordinating Committee of the Gulf Research Health Outreach Program. He is also active on shale gas issues and on issues related to the science and policy interface.
Carys Mitchelmore is a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland. Her expertise is in environmental health and toxicology and her research emphasis is on understanding the fate and effects of chemicals and other pollutants on resident organisms. Dr. Mitchelmore’s work focuses on the detection of pollutants in various environmental matrices and understanding their uptake, routes of exposure, metabolism, mechanisms of toxicity, bioaccumulation, and trophic transfer of chemical contaminants, as well as their implications to organism health, including humans. She also carries out toxicity testing and application for risk assessment, regulation, and management activities. Her investigations have focused on the chemical partitioning and fate and effects of crude oils, oil spill dispersants, organic disinfection by-products, and organic UV filters (components of sunscreens) in numerous invertebrate and vertebrate species, but especially sensitive and/or understudied species like corals and reptiles. Dr. Mitchelmore has served on two previous National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committees: the Committee on the Effects of Diluted Bitumen on the Environment (2016) and the Committee on Understanding Oil Spill Dispersants: Efficacy and Effects (2005), and was also a review coordinator for the recent Committee on the Use of Dispersants in Marine Oil Spill Response (2020). Dr. Mitchelmore received her Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1997 for investigating the metabolism and effects of organic contaminants, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, to aquatic organisms.
Nancy Rabalais is a professor and the Shell Endowed Chair in Oceanography and Wetland Studies at the Louisiana State University College of the Coast and Environment. Dr. Rabalais’s research includes the dynamics of hypoxic environments, interactions of large rivers with the coastal ocean, estuarine and coastal eutrophication, environmental effects of habitat alterations and contaminants, and the impacts of the oil through the water column from the deep benthic to the coastal and continental shelf. Dr. Rabalais is an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, an Aldo Leopold Leadership Program Fellow, and a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She received the 2002 Ketchum Award for coastal research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and shares the Blasker Award with R. E. Turner. She was awarded the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography Ruth Patrick Award and the National Water Research Institute Clarke Prize in summer 2008. Dr. Rabalais has served on 13 National Academies committees and served as a member and the chair of the National Academies’ Ocean Studies Board (2000–2005). She received her Ph.D. in zoology from The University of Texas at Austin in 1983.
Jeffrey Short runs the consulting firm JWS Consulting in Alaska. Dr. Short began his career in oil pollution research in 1972, working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service on oil toxicity effects on Alaskan marine fauna prior to development of the Prudhoe Bay oil field and marine oil terminal in Valdez, Alaska. In investigating the Exxon Valdez spill, Dr. Short led numerous studies on the distribution, fate, and effects of the oil over two decades; these studies led to discovery of embryotoxic effects of oil pollution affecting fish at much lower concentrations that had been recognized previously, and quantitative assessments of lingering oil stranded on beaches and of other pollution sources in the Exxon Valdez spill region. He also worked on evaluating oil dispersant effectiveness under subarctic conditions and contributed to the oil budget for the Exxon Valdez spill, which provided a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of response measures. Dr. Short received his Ph.D. in fisheries from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2006, his M.S. in physical chemistry from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his B.S. in biochemistry and philosophy from the University of California, Riverside.
Scott Socolofsky is a professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M University. His research expertise is in the broad area of environmental fluid mechanics, with an emphasis on laboratory experiments and data analysis to elucidate mixing mechanisms by turbulence and coherent structures in multiphase flows. He has studied the fate and transport of oil in the offshore marine environment for more than 25 years, focusing on near field dynamics of oil spills, including the dynamics of subsea accidental oil well blowouts. He has conducted laboratory experiments of multiphase plumes, and led research cruises to study the fate of natural gas bubbles emitted a deepwater natural seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. He is the developer of the Texas A&M Oil spill/outfall Calculator (TAMOC), an open-source modeling suite for predicting the behavior and near field fate of oil and gas released from subsea spills and natural seepage. Dr. Socolofsky received his M.S. and Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.S. in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder. Before joining Texas A&M University, Dr. Socolofsky worked as an engineer at Wright Water Engineering, Inc., in Denver, Colorado, and as a research associate at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. He is currently the holder of the J. Walter “Deak” Porter ’22 and James W. “Bud” Porter ’51 Chair in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M University.
Berrin Tansel is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. She has conducted extensive research and has published widely on oil–water emulsions remediation of contaminated media (water, sediments, and soil), sources of contaminants released to coastal waters, and the fate of petroleum hydrocarbons in the environment. Dr. Tansel’s research interests include laboratory and field studies on weathering of crude and refined oils, formation and stability of oil–water emulsions, and partitioning and persistence of petroleum-based oil fractions in different phases (slick, emulsion, dispersed, sediment, and tar) and their transport and mobility. Before joining FIU, Dr. Tansel worked as a project manager at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority on the Boston Harbor cleanup project. She has also worked at the Center for Environmental Management at Tufts University on preparation of several research reports to U.S. Congress on waste management. Dr. Tansel is the recipient of the 2009 Edmund Friedman Professional Recognition Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and was named the 2007 Engineer of the Year by the ASCE Miami-Dade Branch for her commitment and impact on the vitality, perception, and future of engineering education. She is a member of the Water Environment Federation, Environmental and Water Resources Institute of ASCE and the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. She is the co-editor in chief of the Journal of Environmental Management and a registered professional engineer in Florida. Dr. Tansel is an elected fellow of ASCE, an elected diplomate of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers, and an elected fellow of the Water Environment Federation. She holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Helen K. White is a professor of chemistry and environmental studies at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Dr. White’s research examines the persistence of human-derived compounds in the marine environment, including those from oil and plastic waste. Her focus is on how the chemical structure, physical associations, and bioavailability of specific chemical compounds determine their cycling and eventual fate. She has investigated persistent oil residues for the past 20 years, including oil in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and oil in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Dr. White is a recipient of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Gulf Research Program’s Early-Career Fellowship and a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. She received her M.Chem. in chemistry from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, and her Ph.D. in chemical oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Following her graduate studies, Dr. White was awarded the Microbial Science Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University. Her previous experience with the National Academies includes serving on the committee that produced the report Use of Dispersants in Marine Oil Spill Response (2020).
Michael Ziccardi is the co-director of the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center (WHC). Dr. Ziccardi has been an oil spill response veterinarian and oiled wildlife response director during more than 50 spills nationally and internationally—most notably as the marine mammal and sea turtle group supervisor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. He has worked as a contract veterinarian for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, a research epidemiologist for the Lincoln Park Zoo, and as both a program coordinator and a senior wildlife veterinarian for WHC. Currently, in addition to being the co-director of WHC, he is the director for California’s Oiled Wildlife Care Network as well as a Health Science Clinical Professor in the Department of Medicine and Epidemiology. Dr. Ziccardi received his D.V.M., as well as his M.S. and Ph.D. in epidemiology, from the University of California, Davis.
