U.S. Representative Vernon J. Ehlers was first elected to the 103rd Congress in December 1993 representing the 3rd District in Michigan. The first research physicist in Congress, Dr. Ehlers serves on three House committees; the Science Committee, the Oversight Committee, and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Dr. Ehlers, a AAAS Fellow, received a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from
the University of California at Berkeley. He conducted research at the
University of Heidelberg in Germany and worked for six years as a research
physicist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory before joining the Physics Department
of Calvin College. Dr. Ehlers served as science advisor to then-Congressman
Gerald Ford, and began his own career in public office when he was elected
to the Michigan state legislature in 1983.
Dr. Roessner’s research interests include technology policy, evaluation of research programs, management of innovation in industry, technology transfer, and indicators of scientific and technological development. He is a AAAS Fellow and a member of the AAAS Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. He has also served as a consultant to the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Commerce, the National Science Foundation, the General Accounting Office, and several national laboratories as well as private corporations.
Lewis M. Branscomb is the Aetna Professor of Public Policy, emeritus, at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. Until July 1996, He directed the school’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program in the Center for Science and International Affairs.
Dr. Branscomb pioneered the study of atomic and molecular negative ions, using absorption spectroscopy in crossed beams of ions and light. He served on President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee, and under President Nixon he was Director of what is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Dr. Branscomb is a past chairman of the National Science Board, and a former president of the American Physical Society. He is a AAAS Fellow, and has written or co-written a number of books, including Korea at the Turning Point: Innovation-Based Strategies for Development (1996), Informed Legislatures: Coping with Science in a Democracy (1996), and Converging Infrastructures: Intelligent Transportation and the National Information Infrastructure (1996).
Claude E. Barfield is a Resident Scholar and Director of Trade and Science and Technology Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. His areas of expertise include international trade, science and technology policy, and US competitiveness. Before joining AEI, Dr. Barfield taught at Yale University and the University of Munich, served in the Ford Administration, and was co-staff director of President Carter’s Commission on a National Agenda for the 1980’s.
Dr. Barfield has recently directed the publication of three major studies from AEI: Science for the 21st Century: The Bush Report Revisited (1997); The Future of Biomedical Research (1997); and The United States and East Asia: Trade and Investment for the Next Decade (1997).
John N. Yochelson is President of the Council on Competitiveness, a non-partisan forum of chief executives from the business, university, and labor communities working to sustain U.S. economic leadership. Previously, he was a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he was responsible for policy research on international trade, investment, and finance. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and also serves on the Board of the Edmond De Rothschild Foundation.
Mr. Yochelson has also worked for the Department of State and has served as a research fellow at Harvard University and at the Brookings Institution. He was also a consultant to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and was a member of the Department of State’s Advisory Committee on International Investment.
Teri F. Willey is Vice President of ARCH Development Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Chicago which handles licensing and new company development based on University and Argonne National Laboratory technologies.
Ms. Willey’s industry experience includes product development and FDA regulatory work for the research and development division of International Minerals and Chemical, as well as marketing research for licensing-in and acquisitions for the new products development division. She has also worked for a state economic development organization that invests state funds into technology-based businesses. Her current professional focus is deal structure in commercializing early stage technologies based on university research.
Walter H. Plosila is Vice President of Public Technology Management for the Batelle Memorial Institute. Previously, he was Executive Director of the North Carolina Alliance for Competitive Technologies. He also served as President of the non-profit Suburban Maryland Technology Council and Deputy Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Commerce. He was also Director of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Office of Policy and Planning, where he initiated the nationally recognized Ben Franklin Partnerships Program.
Dr. Plosila has been a consultant to 38 states in the areas of economic
development, technology, and business-higher education relationships over
the past 15 years. He currently chairs the National Science Foundation’s
Industrial Innovation Committee and sits on its Advisory Board on Engineering.
C. Dan Brand is the Associate Director for Technology Advancement at the National Center for Toxicological Research and Chair for the Federal Laboratory Consortium.
Mr. Brand has served as a scientist and Senior Level Manager for the Food and Drug Administration and is an FDA Award of Merit winner. He is one of four founding members and serves on the Board of the Arkansas Biotechnology Association, and is also founder and current president of the Arkansas Chapter of the Technology Transfer Society. He was elected to the National Technology Transfer Society Board of Directors for 1996 through 1998. Mr. Brand is also a member of the Arkansas Governor’s Science, Research, and Development Planning Committee.
Jon Baron is the Program Manager for the Defense Department’s Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR), which funds approximately $500 million each year in early-stage R&D projects at small technology companies.
Previously, Mr. Baron was a special assistant for dual-use technology policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also served for five years as counsel to the House Committee on Small Business, where he was responsible for all technology legislation within the Committee’s jurisdiction, including the 1993 SBIR Reauthorization Act. He holds a law degree from Yale Law School.
Robert E. Kahn is Chairman, CEO and President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), which he founded in 1986 after a thirteen year term at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA). CNRI was created as a not-for-profit organization to provide leadership and funding for research and development of the National Information Infrastructure.
Before joining DARPA in 1972, Dr. Kahn worked at Bell Laboratories, MIT, and Bolt Beranek and Newman, where he was responsible for the system design of the Arpanet, the first packet-switched network. While at DARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office, Dr. Kahn initiated the U.S. Strategic Computer Program, the largest computer R&D program ever undertaken by the federal government. He conceived the notion of open-architecture networking, and is a co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols and was responsible for originating DARPA’s Internet Program, which he led for three years.
This month, Dr. Kahn will receive the National Medal of Technology in a ceremony at the White House.
Charles F. Larson is Executive Director of the Industrial Research Institute, Inc. (IRI), a Washington, D.C.-based association of 285 industrial companies concerned with enhancing the effectiveness of industrial technological innovation.
Mr. Larson is a founder and past chair of the Pressure Vessels and Piping Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and was chairman of the 43rd National Conference on Advancement of Research. He also co-chaired a joint American Chemical Society (ACS)-IRI Symposium on Innovation and U.S. Research in 1979 and co-edited a book by ACS under the same title. He currently serves on the Joint High-Level Advisory Panel for the U.S.-Japan Science and Technology Agreement.
Since 1993, Louis G. Tornatzky has been Director of the Southern Technology Council, a 15-state consortium of government, industry, and university technology interests dedicated to fostering technology-linked economic development. The Council is currently involved in several "benchmarking" projects, particularly in the areas of university-industry technology transfer practices and policies, technology business incubation, and implementation of technology in K-12 schools.
In the years prior to joining the Council, Dr. Tornatzky was a Center Director and Scientific Fellow at the Industrial Technology Institute. He was also Head of the Innovation Processes Research Group at the National Science Foundation and a Professor of Psychology and Urban Studies at Michigan State University.
Jennifer Montana is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.
Mr. Allen has more than 20 years of experience as a U.S. Senate staff person and technology transfer expert in the Department of Commerce. He was a key negotiator in international agreements like the U.S.-Japan Science and Technology Agreement. As a Senate Judiciary Committee staffer, he worked on the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. As director of the Department of Commerce’s Office of Technology Commercialization, he was involved in the passage of major laws like the 1986 Technology Transfer Act and the 1989 National Technology Transfer Competitiveness Act. Mr. Allen is a co-founder and former president of the Association of Federal Technology Transfer Executives.
Marjory Blumenthal manages the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council. She designs, develops, and directs collaborative study projects, workshops, and symposia on technical, strategic, and policy issues in computing and telecommunications. The interplay of the public and private sectors, and of academia, industry, and government, is a theme throughout her and CSTB’s work.
Before joining CSTB, Ms. Blumenthal worked for GE Information Services,
a unit of the General Electric Company that offers computer- and network-based
services. Previously, she was a Project Director at the former U.S. Congress
Office of Technology Assessment, evaluating computer and communications
technology trends and their social and economic impacts.
David M. Skanderson is a Manager in the Economics Practice of Barents Group LLC, a subsidiary of KPMG Peat Marwick. He is a specialist in the use of data, statistical methods, and quantitative models to analyze economic policy issues in the areas of tax policy, economics, and financial markets. Dr. Skanderson was a principle author of a widely cited 1994 KPMG report on the U.S. tax credit for R&D.
Dr. Skanderson has been involved in numerous Barents Group studies estimating the Federal budgetary impacts of changes in corporate tax law. He has also studied the impacts of reducing price support for sugar, and has advised federal agencies on the use of statistical methods in organizational restructuring. Dr. Skanderson has also worked for other nations, provided analyses of the economic impacts of public policies. He is also involved in providing economic and quantitative training for financial organizations overseas.