Appendix B

Study Committee Biographical Information

Richard A. Sears (Chair), is an adjunct professor in the Department of Energy Science & Engineering at Stanford University, where he develops and teaches courses in energy systems, economics, and oil and gas exploration technology. He was appointed as a member of the Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of the Interior in 2011. He previously served as the chair for the Committee on the Application of Real-Time Monitoring of Offshore Oil and Gas Operations and as a member of the Committee on Options for Implementing the Requirement of Best Available and Safest Technologies for Offshore Oil and Gas Operations. He also served as the chief science and technology adviser to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling that was established by President Obama in May 2010. Mr. Sears had a 33-year career with Shell Oil Company and Royal Dutch Shell, where he acquired significant domestic and international experience in the upstream oil and gas industry. His technical and managerial positions included exploration geophysicist, technical instructor, economist, strategic planner, and general management. His managerial positions ranged from exploration and research to fully integrated exploration and production business management, and his responsibilities have included business planning and forecasting, financial responsibility, and staff planning and development. Between 1999 and 2005, Mr. Sears was a vice president for Royal Dutch Shell, where he was responsible for global deepwater technical services. Between 2006 and 2009, Mr. Sears worked as the external research coordinator for the Shell Group and was appointed a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In this position, he was

responsible for managing Shell’s energy research activities at MIT and other key U.S. universities and for integrating external research objectives with internal technology strategies. While at MIT, he was an active participant in the campus-wide Energy Initiative, carried out applied research in energy systems, taught and contributed to courses in several departments, and served as a liaison between the MIT Energy Initiative and oil companies. Mr. Sears is the author of numerous external and internal publications. He received a B.S. in physics from Stanford University and an M.S. in geophysics from Stanford University.

Norman A. Abrahamson (NAE), an adjunct professor in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, has been involved in research at the interface between earthquake science (geology and seismology) and earthquake engineering (geotechnical and structural). Dr. Abrahamson is involved with studies of seismic safety of critical infrastructure that is moving from simple standards (such as building codes) toward risk-informed decision making. Dr. Abrahamson has been involved in strong-motion seismology for 18 years. He has extensive experience in the practical application of seismology to the development of deterministic and probabilistic seismic criteria (response spectra and time histories) for engineering design or analyses. He has been involved in developing design-basis ground motions for hundreds of projects including dams, bridges, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste repositories, water and gas pipelines, rail lines, ports, landfills, hospitals, electric substations, and office buildings. About three-fourths of these projects have been in the western United States and the other one-fourth have been in the eastern United States or outside of the United States. At Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Dr. Abrahamson is responsible for developing grounds for seismic evaluations of PG&E facilities, including nuclear power plants, nuclear waste storage, dams, penstocks, electric substations, office buildings, and gas pipelines. He is also responsible for the technical management of the PG&E seismic research program funded through the Pacific Engineering Research Center. As a consultant, Dr. Abrahamson has been involved in the ground motion studies for several major engineering projects in California. Recent projects include the Caltrans major toll bridge retrofit projects, the CalFed project for the Sacramento Delta levee system, the BART seismic retrofit project, and the San Francisco International Airport expansion. He has been involved in developing ground motion for nuclear plants and dams in the United States and in other countries. He served as the leader of the ground motion characterization team for the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Dr. Abrahamson was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2018. Dr. Abrahamson received his Ph.D. and B.A. in geophysics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Paul G. Bradley is currently the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE’s) Energy Division Head of Operations and part of the Energy Divisions Senior Leadership Team with overall responsibility for Offshore United Kingdom Continental Shelf and onshore inspection teams, well engineering operations (including net-zero transition aspects), and the mines, quarries, diving, and renewables industries. Mr. Bradley joined HSE (the United Kingdom’s independent regulator) in 2008 as the HM principal inspector of mechanical engineering in the major accident hazardous industries sector, following 28 years of working as a mechanical engineer in the Hazardous Industries Division. Mr. Bradley graduated from Robert Gordon University with an M.S. in drilling and well engineering.

VADM Manson K. Brown is a retired U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Vice Admiral (VADM) and public official. VADM Brown served on active duty for 36 years. In addition to serving as an engineering duty officer on the USCG icebreaker Glacier, his operational assignments focused on the USCG’s missions with maritime safety, security, and environmental stewardship. His operational commands included Coast Guard Sector Honolulu, the Fourteenth Coast Guard District in Hawaii, and Coast Guard Pacific Area in Alameda, California. Staff assignments included serving as the Military Assistant to the Secretary of Transportation, and various positions in mission support, engineering, and personnel. In 2004, he performed a temporary assignment in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom where he oversaw restoration of that country’s transportation systems, including maritime ports. After retiring as the USCG’s Deputy Commandant for Mission Support, VADM Brown was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction on March 18, 2015. In this role, he strategically drove administration policy, programming, and investments for all National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) observing systems, including in situ instruments and satellites, and the process of converting observations to predictions for environmental threats related to weather, climate, water, oceans, and space weather. He also served as the NOAA deputy administrator. He graduated in 1978 from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy with a B.S. in civil engineering. He also holds an M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.S. national resources strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He is a retired registered professional civil engineer.

Paul S. Fischbeck is a professor in the Department of Engineering & Public Policy and the Department of Social & Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His general research involves normative and descriptive risk analysis. Past and current research includes the development of a risk index to prioritize inspections of offshore oil

production platforms, an engineering and economic policy analysis of air pollution from international shipping, a large-scale probabilistic risk assessment of the space shuttle’s tile protection system, and a geographic information system designed to evaluate health risk, economic potential, environmental justice, and political factors of oil refineries and abandoned industrial sites using a variety of metrics. He has written extensively on various applications of decision and risk analysis methods and has won several awards from the Institute of Operations Research and Management Sciences. He has chaired two and served on eight other National Academies’ committees investigating such topics as the risks faced by engineered marine systems, risk assessment of the Alaska oil and gas infrastructure, terror attacks on U.S. shipping, safety of double-hull tankers, and risks from oil barge traffic around Cape Cod and oil spills in the Aleutian Islands. He is also the co-founder of the Brownfield Center at Carnegie Mellon, an interdisciplinary research group investigating ways to improve industrial site reuse. A 2002 book, Improving Regulation (RFF Press, co-edited with Scott Farrow), presents a dozen case studies of how to integrate insights from multiple disciplines to improve the regulatory process. Dr. Fischbeck received his B.S. in architecture from the University of Virginia, M.S. in operations research and systems analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School, and Ph.D. in industrial engineering and engineering management from Stanford University.

Dwight Johnston has worked in the oil and gas industry for more than 40 years, 36 of those years for Shell Oil Company in a variety of positions, including asset or operations management, project management, health and safety executive (HSE) leadership, and engineering positions. As an independent consultant, he has supported a variety of clients in developing safety management systems, process safety management programs, and operating and maintenance management systems. Mr. Johnston spent most of his career in the United States, but he spent 10 years working on international projects, living overseas for 3 years. Before retiring from Shell in December 2015, he worked for 8 years as the global process safety manager and vice president of HSE for Shell’s global deepwater organization. In the global process safety management role, he worked across Shell’s global business; supporting exploration and production, refining and manufacturing, and pipeline organizations. He also served on the Boards of the Center for Offshore Safety and the Ocean Energy Safety Institute. Mr. Johnston has a B.S. in civil engineering from Texas A&M University.

Ulku G. Oktem is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Near-Miss Management LLC and is a globally recognized expert in the field of near misses. Her pioneering work has received international recognition and

coverage in scientific journals and has been heavily adopted by chemical companies and organizations such as the Center for Chemical Process Safety and Society of Petroleum Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. She also serves as an adjunct professor at the Operations and Information Management Department and a senior fellow at the Risk Center of the Wharton Business School. Her prior industry experience includes managing product development of specialty chemicals at Rohm & Haas. She holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware, an M.S. from Clarkson College, and a B.S. from the Middle East Technical University.

S. Camille Peres is an associate professor with Environmental and Occupational Health at Texas A&M University and a certified human factors professional. She is the director of the Next Generation Advanced Procedures Consortium and regularly gives invited talks with industry, sharing the results of this consortium. She does collaborative research on human factors and high-risk processing industry such as the oil and gas industry, chemical processing, and emergency response. She is currently involved in investigations regarding performance implications for procedure design and use; understanding human–robotic interaction in disaster environments; and measuring team performance in emergency operations. She received an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from Rice University, an M.A. in psychology from the University of Houston-Clear Lake, and a B.A. in technical theatre from the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Kathy A. Seabrook is the founder and chief executive officer of Global Solutions, Inc. She has more than 30 years of diverse safety, health, and environmental management experience working with multinational and U.S. and UK companies, across industry, globally. She is a U.S. certified safety professional, and a UK chartered fellow of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, and a European occupational safety and health manager. Using a risk-based approach, Seabrook assists companies with strategically managing their health, safety, and environmental risks through their sustainable business strategies, integrated management systems, policies, processes, programs, and practices. Incorporating principles of culture change, leadership development, and global safety and health management, a company more efficiently and effectively embraces an integrated approach to strategy, policy, corporate standard, risk assessment, competency, and audit process development and implementation. Safety and health management becomes a lever for improving corporate performance as well as a culture that supports safety and health. Seabrook’s global safety and health experience informs her keynote speaking, leadership and occupational health and safety management systems workshops, global leadership

coaching, cross-cultural team building, and other safety-related education programs. She is a U.S. delegate and the vice chair of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to TC283/ISO 45001, a current member of the advisory board for the Capitals Coalition, a past president of the American Society of Safety Professionals, and a former board chair of the Center for Safety and Health Sustainability. She holds a B.S. in chemistry from James Madison University.

Charles R. Williams II served as the executive director for the Center for Offshore Safety (COS) from March 2012 to May 2020. He is currently an independent consultant. Following the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010, Mr. Williams’s technical expertise and focus included industry operations, process change and improvement, as well as preparedness and response to major oil and gas incidents. Because of this work and leadership, Mr. Williams helped to create the Center for Offshore Safety and establish the Marine Well Containment Company—an industry-sponsored company continuously ready to respond to a well control incident. After a 40-year career, Mr. Williams retired from Shell Oil as the global chief scientist in 2012. During his tenure at Shell, Mr. Williams acquired extensive technical expertise in the upstream oil and gas industry, holding many technical and senior managerial positions including global vice president of research and development. Mr. Williams’s technical work has included the development of equipment, policies and procedures, and best practices for extreme-environment wells. Mr. Williams has testified and presented extensively on process improvement, safety management, drilling, drilling safety, and technology to various groups including congressional committees, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, Presidential Commission on Deepwater Horizon, International Regulators Forum, 11th National Conference on Science, Policy, and Environment, and the Marine Board of the National Academies. Mr. Williams has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Tennessee and is a licensed professional engineer.