Gulf-Alaska Knowledge Exchange: Learning from the Legacy of Past Oil Spills: Proceedings of a Workshop Series (2025)
Chapter: Appendix A: Planning Committee and Staff Biographical Sketches
Appendix A
Planning Committee and Staff Biographical Sketches
PLANNING COMMITTEE BIOGRAPHIES
Edwin (Ed) Levine (Chair) currently operates his own consulting company, Scientific Support and Coordination, LLC, providing training and crisis response. He retired from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) after 33 years with the Emergency Response Division. He has participated locally, nationally, and internationally in hundreds of incidents involving oil spills, chemical releases, and many other various emergency responses including the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills. He provided planning and preparedness activities including training and participation on numerous committees at all levels of government, industry, and academia. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Spill Control Organization. Among his many recognitions Mr. Levine received the NOAA Distinguished Career Award, three U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Meritorious Team Commendations, and the USCG Commander’s Award for Civilian Service. He received an M.S. degree from the University of Puerto Rico in marine sciences and a B.A. from Boston University in coastal environmental sciences. Most recently he was the vice-chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine publication Oil in the Sea IV: Inputs, Fates, and Effects (2022).
Adriana C. Bejarano (through June 10, 2024) is a senior ecotoxicologist and environmental scientist, formerly with Shell Global Solutions and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and an affiliate scientist with the School of Social and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Glasgow. She is a subject matter expert on issues related to the impacts of oil spills on the marine environment and had previously provided scientific support to the U.S. Coast Guard through NOAA’s Emergency Response Division on issues related to oil and chemical spills. She also developed damage assessment metrics for several spills and coordinated early-restoration planning following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Dr. Bejarano’s research has focused on the development of predictive models and the integration of scientific knowledge into user-friendly tools for use in oil spill preparedness and response. She has served as the chair of the American Petroleum Institute’s Science and Technology Working Group and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry’s (SETAC) North America Science Committee and is a current member of SETAC’s Chemicals Management Panel to the UN Environment Program Open-Ended Working Group Science-Policy Panel for the Sound Management of Chemicals and Waste and to Prevent Pollution. She holds a B.A. in marine biology from Universidad del Valle, Colombia, and an M.S. in marine science and a Ph.D. in aquatic toxicology from the University of South Carolina. She served as a National Academies committee member for the reports Evaluation of the Use of Chemical Dispersants in Oil Spill Response and Review of ICCOPR’s 2022–2027 Oil Pollution Research and Technology Plan.
Raven Cunningham (through July 24, 2024) is the tribal fish and wildlife director for the Chugach Regional Resources Commission. She promotes the rights of the Chugach region tribes while helping to meet their subsistence, cultural, and economic needs through sustainable fish and wildlife populations. She also brings tribal voices and viewpoints to the center of research and management within the region, protects traditional ways of life and well-being, and helps ensure Alaska Native management of traditional lands and resources. Ms. Cunningham received her bachelor’s degree in Alaska Native studies and rural development with a concentration in natural resource management from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She currently sits as vice chair on the Native Village of Eyak Tribal Council and Alaska Native Fisherman’s Alliance, and as the Chugach representative for the Indigenous Peoples Council for Marine Mammals.
Bernard (Bernie) Goldstein is dean emeritus and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health who has retired to
Alaska where he previously studied the benzene risk of Valdez residents. He is a physician and toxicologist with training in epidemiology. He was a faculty member of the New York University Department of Environmental Medicine; then at Rutgers where he was the chair of the Department of Environmental and Community Medicine and founding director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute; and then dean of the Pitt School of Public Health. Dr. Goldstein served as the Environmental Protection Agency assistant administrator for research and development under Administrators Ruckelshaus and Thomas and was elected president of the Society for Risk Analysis. His involvement in the Gulf oil spill led to publications on disaster response, including an invited review in the New England Journal of Medicine. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, his academy-related activities include chairing more than 10 committees and serving on more than 20 committees of which most pertinent are his membership on the original Advisory Group and then the Board of the Gulf Research Program, and on the National Academies Committees on the Evaluation of the Use of Chemical Dispersants in Oil Spill Response and Oil in the Sea IV. He also chaired the Coordinating Committee of the Gulf Region Health Outreach Program.
Davin Holen is a coastal community resilience specialist for the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program and associate professor conducting research for the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He facilitates workshops and other activities related to coastal resilience addressing monitoring, mitigation, and adaptation to local stressors from climatic and ocean changes. Before joining Alaska Sea Grant, Dr. Holen spent 15 years at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game conducting social-science research and managing the subsistence program in southern Alaska. His dissertation, as well as current research and extension efforts, examines societal and economic factors intertwined with climatic and environmental changes influencing subsistence economies important for culture in Alaskan communities. He developed and manages the website Adapt Alaska (adaptalaska.org) hosted by Alaska Sea Grant. Since 2015, he has been a member of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council Scientific Advisory Committee and now serves as chair. He led the 2019 National Academies Gulf Research Program–funded workshop in Alaska, Setting Priorities for Health, Social, and Economic Disruptions from Spills in Alaska: Learning from the Past, Preparing for the Future. Dr. Holen has spent a career researching the societal impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince
William Sound and has published several technical papers on the topic. He previously served as the Alaska representative on the National Academies Gulf Research Program Gulf Health and Resilience Board.
Mây Thị Nguyễn is a senior philanthropic advisor at the East Bay Community Foundation. She has more than 15 years of experience in climate and disaster resilience as a community organizer, attorney, and nonprofit leader. She has provided written testimony on the Oil Pollution Act for a U.S. Senate Energy Subcommittee hearing; offered perspective on NBC, NPR, and local Louisiana media; and co-authored a white paper on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. In her community-based work, she published a revised second edition environmental law and policy advocacy guide, taught an undergraduate program, and trained more than a thousand people affected by the spill and local elected leaders to protect the environment. She received the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Public Policy’s Rishwain Social Justice Entrepreneurship Award for her transformative organizing work with Black, Indigenous, and immigrant fishing communities to win recognition and damages for traditional fishing practices. Ms. Nguyễn earned a J.D. with a certificate in public interest law and policy from the UCLA School of Law, a B.A. in political science from Amherst College, and an M.A. in international economics and Southeast Asia studies from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.
W. Scott Pegau serves as the research program manager for the Oil Spill Recovery Institute. His duties include searching for the best research and development projects that can improve oil spill recovery in Arctic and subarctic marine waters. This involves understanding the capabilities of existing oil spill response equipment and how it is used. He also serves as crew and alternate captain on a fishing vessel that is contracted for rapid response to oil spills in Prince William Sound. He trains annually and perform drills in nearshore and offshore response. This allows him to train on many of the response tactics used in the nearshore environment and provides first-hand knowledge of the equipment used during spill response. He has a background in oceanography with a Ph.D. from Oregon State University and a B.S. in physics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The oceanography training includes fluid dynamics, which provides a basic understanding of oil spill trajectory modeling. He also had basic training on NOAA’s
GNOME (General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment) oil spill trajectory model.
E. Barrett Ristroph (through January 14, 2025) is a lawyer, planner, mediator, evaluator, and researcher based in south Louisiana with strong ties to Alaska. For many years she has worked for tribes and non-profits to provide legal services, planning, and research related to human rights, natural resources, hazard mitigation, governance, and climate change adaptation and relocation. She founded Ristroph Law, Planning, and Research in 2015 in connection with her dissertation research, which was supported by a grant she won from NOAA’s Sectoral Applications Research Program. Clients include tribes, community-based organizations, nonprofits, and universities. She currently serves on the Board of Buy-In Community Planning and coordinates the Climate Migration and Managed Retreat group affiliated with American Society of Adaptation Professionals. Most recently, she served on EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors and the National Academies Committee on Managed Retreat in the U.S. Gulf Coast Region. She holds a J.D. as well as a Ph.D. in adaptation planning.
Stephen (Steve) H. Sempier is the outreach and deputy director at the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium where he leads the program’s extension, outreach and education team. During the past 17 years he has also led numerous Gulf-wide sea grant initiatives including developing the Southern Gulf of research plan and implementing a community-based restoration program. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, he led a multidisciplinary team of Sea Grant extension and communications specialists located across the five Southern Gulf of states that addressed regional issues ranging from oil spill science to harmful algal blooms to marine microplastics. This team was awarded Sea Grant’s Superior Outreach Programming Award for its oil spill science outreach work. He currently serves as the chair of the Sea Grant Extension Assembly, which comprises the 34 Sea Grant Extension leaders across the United States. Prior to joining Sea Grant, he worked at Mississippi State University on an aquaculture risk management project and at Oregon State University on a U.S. Agency for International Development–supported program devoted to increasing food security in developing nations. He earned his B.S. in marine science at Eckerd College, M.S. in marine resource management at Oregon State University, and Ph.D. in coastal sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi.
U. Rashid Sumaila is a professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Interdisciplinary Ocean and Fisheries Economics at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia. His research focuses on bioeconomics; marine ecosystem valuation; and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, marine protected areas, illegal fishing, climate change, marine plastic pollution, and oil spills. He has experience working in fisheries and natural resource projects in Norway, Canada and the North Atlantic region, Namibia and the Southern African region, Ghana and the West African region, and Hong Kong and the South China Sea. Dr. Sumaila received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Bergen and his B.Sc. in quantity surveying from the Ahmadu Bello University. He is widely published and cited. He won the 2017 Volvo Environment Prize and was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2019. He is served on a National Academies Ocean Studies Board committee: Assessing Equity in the Distribution of Fisheries Management Benefits: Data and Information Availability.
Frances (Fran) Ulmer is an associate fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She has served in a variety of capacities, including chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage, Alaska’s lieutenant governor, state legislator, mayor of Juneau Alaska, professor, lawyer, research director, special advisor to the State Department on the Arctic, chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, and a member of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Commission. She has undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Wisconsin, and has been a visiting professor at Stanford University and at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. She has previous National Academies volunteer service, and she has lectured internationally on Arctic issues from Antarctica to the North Pole. Ms. Ulmer served on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Special Legislative Committee 1989–1990.
Collin P. Ward is an associate scientist in the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His research characterizes how and how fast sunlight and microbes alter the physical and chemical properties of organic carbon in aquatic ecosystems. He works on a wide range of organic carbon types, including natural organic matter, crude oil, and plastics. His study sites span fresh and saline surface waters from the Alaskan Arctic to the Southern Gulf. He was a chair of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Synthesis and Legacy effort, with
a focus on oil fate and weathering at the sea surface and on shorelines. He received the 2024 James J. Morgan Environmental Science & Technology Early Career Award from the American Chemical Society. He earned a B.S. and M.S. in environmental sciences from the Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. in earth and environmental sciences from the University of Michigan.
STAFF BIOGRAPHIES
Jennifer A. Cohen is a senior program officer in the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies. She received her undergraduate degree and her M.P.H. from the University of Maryland, College Park. Ms. Cohen has worked on a number of projects and publications at the National Academies, including Clearing the Air: Asthma and Indoor Air Exposures, biennial Veterans and Agent Orange updates (Update 2000–Update 2014), The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research, Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities: A Comprohensive Approach to a Persistent Problem, Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Opportunities for the Health Care System, and Advancing Health and Resilience in the Gulf of Mexico Region: A Roadmap for Progress. She was also the rapporteur for the workshop summary Challenges and Successes in Reducing Health Disparities. She is a recipient of the Group Distinguished Service Award from the National Academies for the Active Duty and Veterans Health Group.
Stephanie A. Houser is a program officer in the Gulf Environmental Protection and Stewardship Board of the Gulf Research Program at the National Academies. Dr. Houser holds a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Iowa, an M.S. in environmental engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, and a B.S. in civil engineering and a B.A. in internaitonal relations from Bucknell University. Since starting her tenure at the National Academies in 2023, she has worked on advancing sea level rise research and spurring implementation of nature-based solutions in the Gulf region. Dr. Houser has a research background in environmental pathogenic risk assessment modeling and green infrastructure assessment. She previously served as a John A. Knauss Marine Policy fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives advising on energy and environmental policy.
Raúl D. Flamenco is a research associate in the Gulf Environmental Protection and Stewardship Board of the Gulf Research Program at the National Academies. His background is in ecotoxicology, with his past research experiences including work with contaminants in harbor seals, birds, and various fish species. He received his B.S. in environmental biology from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and his M.S. in natural resources from the University of Connecticut. He was a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program award in 2022.
Thelma L. Cox is a program coordinator in the Gulf Environmental Protection and Stewardship Board of the Gulf Research Program at the National Academies. She provided administrative support for three GRP consensus studies that aimed to document progress toward ensuring an outcome of a safe, healthy, and resilient Southern Gulf Coast over time in partial fulfillment of the charge of GRP. Prior to joining GRP, she was a program coordinator for the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences in the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. She also served as an administrative assistant for various boards within the Institute of Medicine (IOM; now the Health and Medicine Division). Since joining the National Academy of Sciences in 1989, she has worked on a diversity of activities and provided administrative support on numerous committees, roundtables, and forums. She is a recipient of the National Research Council Recognition Award and three IOM Staff Achievement Awards. She received an associate of science in business administration degree from Averett University.
