President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts, 3/22/10

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

• Rafael Moure-Eraso, Chair, Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
• Mark A. Griffon, Member, Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
• Robert M. “Skipp” Orr, United States Executive Director, Asian Development Bank, with the Rank of Ambassador
• Carl Wieman, Associate Director for Science, Office of Science and Technology Policy

President Obama said, “I am grateful that these exceptional individuals have chosen to dedicate their talents to serving the American people. I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.” 

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

Rafael Moure-Eraso, Nominee for Chair, Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Rafael Moure-Eraso is currently serving as a Professor and Graduate Coordinator for the Department of Work Environment in the School of Health and Environment at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he has been Chair of the department for the last five years. He has been a member of the faculty at the University of Massachusetts for twenty two years --12 as an Associate Professor (1988) and 10 as a full Professor since 2000.  From 1993-2000, Dr. Moure-Eraso was a Visiting Lecturer in Occupational Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.  In 1994-95, he held an Intergovernmental Personnel Assignment at the U.S. Department of Labor as a special senior advisor on the prevention of chemical exposures to the Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA).   Prior to joining the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Dr. Moure-Eraso served for 15 years (1973-1988) as an Industrial Hygienist Engineer with the national offices of two international unions: the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) and the United Automobile Workers (UAW).  His ten years as an Industrial Hygienist of the OCAW gave him substantial field experience in the Chemical and Petro-Chemical industry. Dr. Moure-Eraso has been a member of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health for OSHA and a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).  He also was a member of both the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council and the Board of Scientific Counselors to the National Toxicological Program for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the National Institute of Health (NIEHS). He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering (University of Pittsburgh ‘67, Bucknell University, ’70) and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Environment Health (Industrial Hygiene) (University of Cincinnati ’74, ’82). He has been a Certified Industrial Hygienist for Comprehensive Practice (CIH)since 1985. Dr. Moure-Eraso is a senior member of AIChE, AIHA, ACGIH and APHA where he had held national leadership positions.

Mark A. Griffon, Nominee for Member, Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Mark Griffon’s career has included work in academia, the public sector and the private sector.  He started his career in the private sector as a project manager for Chemical Waste Management and then worked in the Work Environment Department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell to develop and deliver Hazardous Waste Training, Radiation Worker Training, and Toxics Use Reduction planning curricula.  While working for the University’s Toxics Use Reduction Institute, he also headed an effort to conduct industry-specific planning workshops with metal working companies, electronics companies, chemical and plastics industries and paper and textile manufacturers.  In 1992, Mr. Griffon founded Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. to provide environmental and occupational health consulting including management and technical oversight of large remediation projects, waste site characterization, radiation surveys, health and safety and health physics audits and investigations, and exposure assessment research.  Mr. Griffon has served as a member of the Federal Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health from 2002 to the present.  In addition to being a member of the Board, Mr. Griffon chairs the subcommittee on dose reconstruction review and chairs several workgroups.  Mr. Griffon also served as a member of the Federal Advisory Committee on External Regulation of Department of Energy Nuclear Safety and as a member of the Advisory Board for the U.S. Transuranium and Uranium Registries. Mr. Griffon holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.S. in Radiological Sciences from University of Massachusetts Lowell. 

Robert M. “Skipp” Orr, Nominee for United States Executive Director, Asian Development Bank, with the Rank of Ambassador
Robert “Skipp” Orr is currently Chairman of the Board of the Panasonic Foundation, a member of the Board of Trustees of J.F. Obirin University and a member of the Board of the East-West Center Foundation. From January 2002 until March 2007 Orr was President of Boeing Japan. He held this position during the development of the most successfully selling airplane in history, the 787 Dreamliner. Prior to joining Boeing, Orr was Vice President and Director of European Affairs for Motorola based in Brussels. And before that he held various senior level posts with Motorola in Japan culminating as Vice President of Government Relations. In that capacity he successfully led the negotiations that opened up the cellular phone market in Japan. He is also a former Vice President of the American Chamber of Commerce Japan. In addition to the corporate world, Orr also has spent many years in academia and the United States Government. Between 1985 and 1993 he was a professor of Political Science at Temple University Japan with two years off to run the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies and the Stanford Center for Technology and Innovation at the Stanford Japan Center in Kyoto. His book, The Emergence of Japan’s Foreign Aid Power, published by Columbia University Press won the 1991 Ohira Prize for best book on the Asia Pacific. Orr’s career began in 1976 when he served for two years as Legislative Assistant to Congressman Paul G. Rogers (D-FL) a 12 term member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Between 1978 and 1981 he served on the House Foreign Affairs Asia Subcommittee staff seconded from the Select Committee on Narcotics. In 1981 he was appointed as Special Assistant to the Assistant Administrator of Asia in the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Department of State. Orr holds a B.A. in History, cum laude, from Florida Atlantic University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Tokyo University. He speaks German and Japanese fluently and has intermediate French.

Carl Wieman, Nominee for Associate Director for Science, Office of Science and Technology Policy
Dr. Carl Wieman currently divides his time between the University of British Columbia and the University of Colorado.  At each institution, he serves as both the Director of Collaborative Science Education Initiatives aimed at achieving widespread improvement in undergraduate science education and as a Professor of Physics. From 1984 through 2006, he was a Distinguished Professor of Physics and Presidential Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado. While at the University of Colorado, he was a Fellow of JILA (a joint federal-university institute for interdisciplinary research in the physical sciences) and he served as the Chair of JILA from 1993-95.  Dr. Wieman has conducted extensive research in atomic and laser physics.  His research has been recognized with numerous awards including sharing the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for the creation of a new form of matter known as “Bose-Einstein condensation”. Dr. Wieman has also worked extensively on research and innovations for improving science education; he was the founding Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Science Education. He has received numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation’s Distinguished Teaching Scholar Award (2001), the Carnegie Foundation’s U.S. University Professor of the Year Award (2004), and the American Association of Physics Teachers’ Oersted Medal (2007) for his work on science education.  Dr. Wieman received his B.S. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1977.