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Committee Biographies

KATHARINE G. FRASE, Co-Chair, retired from IBM after a 30-year career in 2016. Her career spanned positions in manufacturing, product and process development, strategy, research, and business development. Her most recent assignments were in support of IBM’s clients and field teams in the government, cities, health care, and education industries, particularly the application of analytics and technologies such as Watson, to provide actionable insights for some of the world’s most important challenges. In 2006, she was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Dr. Frase received an A.B. in chemistry from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

JOSEPH S. HEZIR, Co-Chair, is a principal with the Energy Futures Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing a cleaner, safer, more affordable, and more secure energy future. He is currently the Professor of the Practice at the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation of Carnegie Mellon University. From December 2014 to January 2017 he was the chief financial officer of the Department of Energy (DOE) with responsibility for $30 billion in spending authority. He was the co-founder and from 1992 to 2014 the managing partner of the EOP Group, Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in federal government regulatory strategy development and budget policy. He previously served 18 years in the White House Office of Management and Budget in positions of increasing responsibility, serving for 6 years as the deputy associate director for energy and science. He has also served on a number of advisory bodies, including the NASA Advisory Council and the Metropolitan Area Board of Directors for the Red Cross. From Carnegie Mellon University, Mr. Hezir earned a B.S. in

chemical engineering and an M.S. from the Heinz School of Public Policy. He has previously served on numerous National Academies’ committees, including the Committee on EPP2010: Elementary Particle Physics in the 21st Century, the Committee on Burning Plasma Assessment, the Committee on Cost of and Payment for Animal Research, and he is a past member of the Board on Physics and Astronomy.

BURCU AKINCI is the Paul Christiano Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the associate dean for research for the College of Engineering, the director of the Engineering Research Accelerator, and the co-director of the Pennsylvania Smarter Infrastructure Incubator at Carnegie Mellon University. She earned her B.S. in civil engineering (1991) from Middle East Technical University and her M.B.A. (1993) from Bilkent University at Ankara, Turkey. After that, she earned her M.S. (1995) and her Ph.D. (2000) in civil and environmental engineering with a specialization in construction engineering and management from Stanford University. Her research interests include the development of approaches to model and reason about information-rich histories of facilities, to streamline construction and facility management processes. She specifically focuses on investigating utilization and integration of building information models with data capture and tracking technologies, such as 3D imaging, embedded sensors and radio-frequency identification systems to capture semantically-rich, as-built histories of construction projects and facility operations. Dr. Akinci has one patent, two patent applications, more than 60 refereed journal publications, and 80 refereed conference publications. She co-edited a book on CAD/GIS integration and another book on embedded commissioning.

JESUS M. DE LA GARZA joined Clemson University in 2019 as the chair of the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering; he is now the director of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences. Previously, he was the Vecellio Professor of Construction Engineering and Management in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. Dr. de la Garza came to the faculty of Virginia Tech in 1988. His areas of interest and courses taught include civil infrastructure systems, highway infrastructure management, interdependencies of infrastructure systems, resilient infrastructure systems, information technology, construction safety, project management, and project controls. From January 2004 to August 2006, Dr. de la Garza served as the director of the Information Technology and Infrastructure Systems Program within the Civil and Mechanical Systems Division at the National Science Foundation. He has co-authored numerous papers in refereed publications and has received awards for several of his papers. He has been inducted into the National Academy of Construction, is a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and a Fellow of the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA). Dr. de la Garza helped spearhead a course that brings

industry professionals from such companies as Bechtel, Fluor, duPont, Procter & Gamble, and KBR to Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus to educate students on the best practices being incorporated into the construction field. As the director of CHAMPS (Center for Highway Asset Management Programs) he led the efforts to identify innovative ways to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the performance-based (also known as end-state contracts) road maintenance contracts that the Virginia Department of Transportation awards. Dr. de la Garza is the chief editor of ASCE’s Journal of Construction Engineering and Management and a member of the funded studies committee of the Construction Industry Institute (CII). He earned his B.S. in civil engineering from Tecnologico de Monterrey in 1978, and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Illinois in 1984 and 1988, respectively.

CLIFFORD C. EBY is an independent consultant who is the former president of the U.S. Transportation sector for WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff, a global engineering and professional services organization. In that leadership role, he led more than 4,000 planners, engineers, and managers. Previously, as the senior vice president for Parsons Brinckerhoff’s Technical Excellence Centers, Mr. Eby supported the firm’s strategic efforts in rail and infrastructure markets, particularly high-speed rail. He has worked more than 40 years in the transportation industry, with expertise in rail safety, regulatory practices, transportation policy, and rail infrastructure design. Mr. Eby has also served as the acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration. He holds a B.S. in civil engineering from Lehigh University and an M.B.A. from The George Washington University.

G. EDWARD (EDD) GIBSON, JR., is a professor and the Sunstate Chair of Construction Management and Engineering in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University (ASU). Dr. Gibson served as the school director from 2011 to 2018 and before that as programs chair of the Del E. Webb School of Construction from 2009 to 2011. In addition to ASU, he has served on the faculties of North Carolina State University, The University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Dr. Gibson’s educational background includes a B.S. and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from Auburn University and an M.B.A. from the University of Dallas. He has been a principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on more than $11 million of funded research in his career. Dr. Gibson’s research and teaching interests include front-end planning, organizational change, asset management, alternative dispute resolution, earned value management systems, and risk management, and he has received several awards for research excellence including CII’s outstanding researcher twice. Dr. Gibson has authored or co-authored more than 250 publications, taught more than 210 short courses to industry, and given more than 300 presentations in his career. He has been active on many national committees, among them a National Academies’ committee investigating project management practices at

DOE in the early 2000s, and as the president of the Architectural Engineering Institute. He also served as a Fulbright senior specialist in Norway in fall 2004 and as a visiting academic fellow at Cambridge University in spring 2019. Dr. Gibson was awarded the 2016 R.L. Peurifoy Award for outstanding research from ASCE. He has several years of industry experience and is a licensed professional engineer in Texas. Dr. Gibson is an elected member of the National Academy of Construction and a distinguished member in ASCE, and from 2012 to 2018 was a member of the National Academies’ Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment.

GERALDINE KNATZ is a professor of the practice of policy and engineering, a joint appointment between the University of Southern California (USC) Price School of Public Policy and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Dr. Knatz served as the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles from 2006 to January 2014. Prior to directing the Port of Los Angeles, she served as the managing director of the Port of Long Beach. Dr. Knatz is a past president of the American Association of Port Authorities and a past president of the International Association of Ports and Harbors and was the founding chair of the World Port Climate Initiative. She is the current chair of the board of Trustees of Altasea at the Port of Los Angeles. Dr. Knatz has received numerous awards, including outstanding women in transportation from the Journal of Commerce, 2007; woman executive of the year from the Los Angeles Business Journal, 2007; the Compass Award from the Women’s Leadership Exchange, 2008; an honorary Ph.D. from the Maine Maritime Academy, 2009; the Peter Benchley Ocean Award from the Blue Frontier Campaign in 2012; and a lifetime achievement award from Containerization Intermodal Institute in 2014. In 2014, she was elected to the NAE in recognition of her international leadership in the engineering and development of environmentally clean urban seaports. Dr. Knatz serves on the board of directors for Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia. She earned a Ph.D. in biological sciences from USC, an M.S. in environmental engineering from USC, and a B.A. in zoology from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick.

ROBERT PRIETO is currently the chair and chief executive officer of Strategic Program Management LLC, focused on improving capital efficiency in large capital construction programs and strengthening engineering and construction organizations. Previously, he was a senior vice president of Fluor focused on the development and delivery of large, complex projects worldwide. Mr. Prieto is the author of Strategic Program Management and eight other books, more than 850 papers and presentations, and has four patents. His industry involvement includes the Industry Leaders Council of ASCE, the National Academy of Construction, and as a fellow of CMAA. He serves on a wide range of industry advisory panels, including the Millennium Challenge Corporation Advisory Board; the World

Economic Forum Global Strategic Infrastructure Initiative Steering Committee and Global Advisory Council; and the Executive Consultation Group (ECG) of the OECD Blue Dot Network. Mr. Prieto served as one of three U.S. presidential appointees to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council; co-chaired the infrastructure task force in New York after 9/11; and served as the chair at Parsons Brinckerhoff, one of the world’s leading engineering companies. He serves on the advisory board of the New York University School of Engineering Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Engineering Academic Advisory Council of New York University, Abu Dhabi; he also previously served as a trustee of Polytechnic University. He was appointed as an honorary global advisor for the PM World Journal. Mr. Prieto has served on various engineering company boards and currently serves on the Mott MacDonald Shareholders Committee as an independent member and as a nonexecutive director of the Saudi-based Dar al Riyadh Group.

GEOFFREY S. ROTHWELL is a senior consulting economist for Longenecker & Associates, contracting with the DOE-National Nuclear Security Administration, focused on the role of markets in non-proliferation. Between 2018 and 2021, he was the chief consulting economist for Turner | Harris, Manchester, United Kingdom. Between 2013 and 2018, he was the principal economist at the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France, where he worked on the economics of radioactive waste management, among other topics. From 1986 to 2012 at Stanford University, he was the director of Honors Programs in the Department of Economics and the Public Policy Program, the associate director in the Public Policy Program, and a senior lecturer in the Department of Economics and Public Policy Program. He has served on National Academies’ committees to review DOE’s Environmental Management Program (2020-2021); to review DOE’s Nuclear Energy R&D Program (2006-2007); and to review the Decontamination and Decommissioning of Uranium Enrichment Facilities (1993-1996). Dr. Rothwell received his M.A. in jurisprudence from Berkeley Law School, University of California, Berkeley, in 1984; his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985; and finished a post-doctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology in 1986.

HANS A. VAN WINKLE is the president of Van Winkle Consulting. He has been an engineer leader for more than 40 years. Serving in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), he culminated his career of more than 30 years as the director of civil works and then as the deputy director of USACE, retiring with the rank of major general. As the director of civil works, he oversaw the Corps’ work building the nation’s navigation, flood control, and environmental restoration projects, and as the deputy director of the Corps, he planned, coordinated, and controlled the Corps’ $17 billion annual budget. After retirement, he initially

worked as the director of CII at The University of Texas. There he oversaw CII’s research program, creating best practices for the leading owner and industry companies working around the world. Subsequently, he became the president of Hill International, a private company advising on project management practices for companies throughout the nation. Later, he moved to Parsons Brinkerhoff and implemented these best practices in work situations such as the Medupi Power Plant in South Africa, at the time, the world’s largest air-cooled power plant, and then as the project manager of the California High Speed Rail project, a $70 billion program designed to link San Francisco and Los Angeles with a high-speed train system. Mr. Van Winkle now works through his firm as a private consultant for a variety of companies.