President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:

·       Debo P. Adegbile – Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Department of Justice

·       Marc Kastner – Director of the Office of Science, Department of Energy

·       Mark E. Lopes – Member, Board of Directors of the Inter-American Foundation

·       Vivek Hallegere Murthy – Surgeon General, Department of Health and Human Services

·       Franklin Orr – Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy

President Obama also announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key Administration posts:

·       Susan L. Graham – Member, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

·       J. Michael McQuade – Member, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

President Obama said, “I am confident that these outstanding individuals will greatly serve the American people in their new roles and I look forward to working with them in the months and years to come.”

President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:

Debo P. Adegbile, Nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Department of Justice

Debo P. Adegbile is Senior Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, a position he has held since July 2013.  Previously, from 2001 to 2013, Mr. Adegbile held a number of roles at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., including Special Counsel, Acting President and Director-Counsel, Associate Director-Counsel and Director of Litigation, Associate Director of Litigation, and Assistant Counsel.  Prior to joining the NAACP, he was an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison from 1994 to 2001.  Mr. Adegbile received a B.A. from Connecticut College and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Dr. Marc Kastner, Nominee for Director of the Office of Science, Department of Energy

Dr. Marc Kastner is the Dean of the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a position he has held since 2007.  Previously, Dr. Kastner was the department head of the MIT Department of Physics from 1998 to 2007.  From 1993 to 1998, he directed MIT’s Center for Materials Science and Engineering, and from 1989 to1992 he was the Associate Director of MIT's Consortium for Superconducting Electronics.  In 1989, Dr. Kastner was named Donner Professor of Science at MIT and from 1983 to 1987 he served as Head of the MIT Department of Physics Division of Atomic, Condensed Matter, and Plasma Physics.  He joined the MIT Department of Physics in 1973 and was previously a research fellow at Harvard University.  Dr. Kastner received an S.B., M.S., and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Mark E. Lopes, Nominee for Member, Board of Directors of the Inter-American Foundation

Mark E. Lopes is Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a position he has held since 2010.  He was nominated to serve as the United States Executive Director of the Inter-American Development Bank in September, 2013.  From 2007 to 2010, Mr. Lopes served as the Senior Policy Advisor for the International Development and Foreign Assistance subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.  Prior to this, he served on detail to the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.  From 1999 to 2001, he served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay.  His government service began in 2003 as a Presidential Management Fellow, where he served in a variety of roles at USAID.  Mr. Lopes received a B.M. from Berklee College of Music and an M.P.P. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy, Nominee for Surgeon General, Department of Health and Human Services

Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy is the Co-Founder and President of Doctors for America, a position he has held since 2009.  Dr. Murthy is also a Hospitalist Attending Physician and Instructor in Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School, a position he has held since 2006.  In 2011, Dr. Murthy was appointed to serve as a Member of the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health.  Dr. Murthy has been the Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of TrialNetworks, formerly known as Epernicus, since 2007.  Dr. Murthy co-founded VISIONS Worldwide in 1995, a non-profit organization focused on HIV/AIDS education in India and the United States, where he served as President from 1995 to 2000 and Chairman of the Board from 2000 to 2003.  Dr. Murthy received a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.B.A. from Yale School of Management, and an M.D. from Yale School of Medicine. 

Dr. Franklin Orr, Nominee for Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy

Dr. Franklin Orr is the Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, a position he has held since 2009.  Dr. Orr has been an associate professor and professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering since 1985.  From 2002 to 2008, Dr. Orr served as the Director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford.  He was the Dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford from 1994 to 2002 and the Chairman of the Department of Petroleum Engineering from 1991 to 1994.  Dr. Orr held several other research positions from 1970 to 1985 in New Mexico, Texas, and Washington, D.C.  Dr. Orr received a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

President Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key Administration posts:

Dr. Susan L. Graham, Appointee for Member, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

Dr. Susan L. Graham is the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, where she began teaching in 1971.  She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.  She has served on the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and was co-chair of the National Research Council study on the Future of Supercomputing.  Dr. Graham received an A.B. in Mathematics from Harvard University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Dr. J. Michael McQuade, Appointee for Member, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

Dr. J. Michael McQuade is Senior Vice President of Science and Technology at United Technologies Corporation, a position he has held since 2006.  Previously, he was Vice President of 3M’s Medical Division and President of Eastman Kodak’s Health Imaging business.  He is a member of the Carnegie Mellon University Board of Trustees, the Board of Directors of Project HOPE, and a member of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board and the American Physical Society.  Dr. McQuade received a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University.