Lester Lave, Ph.D.

Evaluation Subcommittee

Lester B. Lave is the James Higgins Professor of Economics and Finance, Professor of Urban and Public Affairs, and Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at The H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University.  Dr. Lave received his doctorate in economics from Harvard University.  Professor Lave's current research focus is policy analysis; environmental economics; risk analysis and management, including air pollution, carcinogenicity of chemicals, safety of dams and highway safety; and product and process design for the environment, including life cycle analysis.  Professor Lave is head of the university-wide Green Design Initiative. All seven colleges at Carnegie Mellon are involved in this university-government-business consortium on improving the design and production of products in order to prevent pollution. His research is focused on environmental quality and risk management. He has authored papers on the value of better weather information, and on the optimal protocol for testing pregnant women to determine if their fetuses have neural tube defects.   Research on the information content of the National Cancer Institute lifetime rodent bioassay demonstrated that the test provided much less information than had been  assumed. Professor Lave is a member of several National Research Council Committees (ionizing radiation in medicine, environmental regulation and productivity, and  prevention of natural disasters), two EPA committees (advisory committee on estimating the benefits and costs of the Clean Air Act and review committee of the Particulate Matter Health Effects). He has also served on many committees of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine as well as of the American Medical Association, Office of Technology Assessment, National Library of Medicine and other nonprofit institutions. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, is a past President of the Society for Risk Analysis, received an award for excellence in teaching, and has been a consultant to almost every cabinet-level department in the federal government as well as a number of state governments. Professor Lave was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute from 1978-1982.