News Brief: Jared L. Cohon Appointed as Co-Chair on the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories

Contact: Sherry Stokes / 412-268-5976 / stokes@cmu.edu

PITTSBURGH—Jared L. Cohon has been appointed as a co-chair on the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories, which will advise Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on how effectively the Energy Department's 17 national laboratories are advancing research that aligns with national science, energy, environmental and security goals.

"It is an honor to be selected to co-chair a commission with such distinguished members and to serve the Department of Energy in this way," said Cohon, president emeritus of Carnegie Mellon University and University Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy.

The congressionally mandated committee will produce a two-part study, the first part of which is due by February 1, 2015.

Cohon served as president of Carnegie Mellon University from 1997 to 2013. Before his time at CMU, Cohon was dean of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies at Yale and both assistant and associate dean of engineering and vice provost for research at Johns Hopkins.

Throughout his career, Cohon has been active in serving the government. Currently, he chairs a committee formed by the National Research Council that is focused on assessing technologies for improving fuel economy of light-duty vehicles. In the past, he served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council and was chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.

An author, coauthor or editor of one book and more than 80 professional publications, Cohon is an expert on environmental and water resource systems analysis, an interdisciplinary field that combines engineering, economics and applied mathematics. His other research interests include environmental and energy systems and policy, multiple criteria decision-making and environmental modeling.

The other members of the committee include:

• Co-Chair T.J. Glauthier, president, TJG Energy Associates, LLC
• Norman Augustine, chairman of the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, NASA and former chairman, Lockheed Martin
• Wanda Austin, president and CEO, The Aerospace Corporation
• Charles Elachi, director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA
• Paul Fleury, Frederick W. Beinecke Professor of Engineering and Applied Physics, Yale University
• Susan Hockfield, professor of Neuroscience and president emerita, MIT
• Richard Meserve, president, Carnegie Institution for Science and chair of the Environmental Stewardship Subcommittee of Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB)
• Cherry Murray, dean, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS)

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