President Obama to appoint U of M engineering professor to Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

Contacts:

Matt Hodson, University News Service, mjhodson@umn.edu, (612) 625-0552

Rhonda Zurn, College of Science and Engineering, rzurn@umn.edu, (612) 626-7959

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (09/24/2012) — The White House announced that President Barack Obama will appoint Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, a civil engineering professor in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering, as a new member of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Foufoula-Georgiou is one of only eight individuals nationwide who will be appointed to the board.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board is an independent agency of the U.S. Federal Government. Its sole purpose is to provide independent scientific and technical oversight of the Department of Energy's program for managing and disposing high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

Foufoula-Georgiou came to the University of Minnesota in 1989. She has served as the director of the National Center for Earth-Surface Dynamics at the University of Minnesota since 2008. She has also served on the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Science Advisory Board since 2005 and is a member of the American Geophysical Union, American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers.

Prior to her faculty appointment at the University of Minnesota, Foufoula-Georgiou was an assistant professor at Iowa State University from 1986 to 1989 and a research associate at University of Minnesota’s St. Anthony Falls Laboratory from 1985 to 1986. She received a degree in civil engineering from the National Technical University in Athens, Greece, as well as an M.S. and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Florida.