Carnegie Mellon University
March 27, 2013

Media Advisory: Carnegie Mellon University To Host Symposium on the Implications Of Shale Gas for America's Regional Manufacturing Economies

Contact: Chriss Swaney / 412-268-5776 / swaney@andrew.cmu.edu
Ken Walters / 412-268-2900 / walters1@andrew.cmu.edu

Event: Shale gas production across the United States is increasing at a rapid rate and is expected to become half of the U.S. natural gas supply by 2040. This low-cost abundant gas provides many economic, environmental, and energy security challenges and opportunities for the western Pennsylvania region and other regions around the country. Carnegie Mellon will host a symposium on shale gas and its implications for regional manufacturing.

The symposium, moderated by David A. Dzombak, the Walter J. Blenko Sr. University Professor of Environmental Engineering and faculty director of the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Research and Education, falls on the heels of CMU's release of a new policymaker's guide indicating the critical need for a government-university-industry research initiative focused on the issue of shale gas and the environment. A team of CMU researchers visited Capitol Hill in March to encourage national, regional and state officials to establish this initiative to fill critical gaps in knowledge at the interface of shale gas and environmental protection so the nation can better prepare for its energy future.

Carnegie Mellon University President Jared L. Cohon will kick off the symposium with an overview of the topic. His remarks will be followed by a series of expert panel discussions spanning industrial development, natural gas for transportation and the environmental impacts.

Andrew Gellman, director of CMU's new Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, will moderate an industrial development panel that includes: Russell Crockett, senior vice president commercial for Texas Petrochemical; Anthony Cugini, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory; Peter Molinaro, vice president of North American Government Affairs for the Dow Chemical Company; and Gerald D. Holder, U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering and Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering.

The natural gas for transportation panel will be moderated by Caren Glotfelty, a senior program director for The Heinz Endowments. Panel members include: William Chernicoff, manager of energy and environmental research, Toyota Motor North America; Richard Kauling, manager of Global Gaseous Fuels Technical Resource Center at General Motors; Brad Mallory, executive deputy secretary for administration with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; James McCarville, executive director of the Port of Pittsburgh Commission; and Ellen McLean, interim CEO of the Port Authority of Allegheny County.
 
M. Granger Morgan, director of CMU's Scott Institute for Energy Innovation and head of the department of Engineering and Public Policy, will moderate the environmental impacts panel that includes: Paul King, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council; Andrew Place, corporate director of Energy and Environmental Policy at EQT; Allen Robinson, head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at CMU and Jeanne VanBriesen, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at CMU.

For additional information, please see www.cmu.edu/energy. The symposium will be webcast live and archived for later viewing. To access the webcast go to http://mts-live.mts.cmu.edu/public/special-event-live/index.html.

When: 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Thursday, April 4.

Where:
McConomy Auditorium, University Center, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213.

###