Contact:
Chriss Swaney
412-268-5776

For immediate release:
July 25, 2006

Carnegie Mellon Engineering Professor Tapped To Outline Steps for Improving Technology Assessment for Congress

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Jon Peha will address a U.S. House of Representatives science committee at 10 a.m., July 25 in Washington, D.C., on ways that Congress can improve its current system of obtaining science and technical advice on key issues.

Peha, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon and associate director of the Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking, will join a panel of experts in room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building to discuss a new program that will help congressional leaders improve the way they tackle key issues, including blackouts, space shuttle launches and homeland security.

Peha, who co-authored "Science and Technology Advice for Congress," argues that Congress and its many committees need more than bare facts and brief interactions with technical experts to analyze and solve some of the nation's most challenging problems.

Other panel members will include Peter Blair, executive director of the division on engineering and physical sciences at the National Research Council; U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J.; Catherine Hunt, president-elect of the American Chemical Society; and Albert Teich, director of the science and policy programs directorate at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., will chair the committee hearing, which is open to the press.