Small
Receives Heinz Chair
Hounshell
Receives Roderick Chair
Two
senior members of the EPP faculty have been honored with
endowed professorships.
Mitchell
J. Small (CEE/EPP) has been awarded the H. John Heinz
III Professorship of Environmental Engineering. Prof.
Small's research involves mathematical modeling and statistical
evaluation of environmental quality, exposure and risk
with application to air, soil, surface-water and ground-water
pollution problems. His recent work has evolved to consider
the impact of human risk perception and behavior in exposure
assessment, and has included collaboration with statisticians,
toxicologists, economists and behavioral and decision
scientists.
Actively
involved in the environmental community, Small has provided
advice to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
as a member of the EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB)
and the Board of Scientific Counselors. He is the chair
of the SAB Environmental Models Committee. Small has served
on a number of National Research Council committees reviewing
issues of environmental contamination in the U.S., most
recently the NRC Committee on Environmental Remediation
at Naval Facilities. He is also an associate editor for
the journal Environmental Science and Technology,
where he has led the development of a new section of the
journal for refereed research papers in environmental
policy.
Small,
who serves as Associate Head for Graduate Education in
EPP, is currently authoring a book with two former students
on integrated modeling of pollutant transport, fate and
exposure. Much of his work has involved the application
of advanced Bayesian statistical methods to problems in
environmental science and policy.
David
A. Hounshell (History/SDS/EPP) has been named the David
M. Roderick Professor. Hounshell, whose undergraduate
background is in electrical engineering, is one of the
nation's leading historians studying innovation at the
intersection of science, technology, and industry. His
work includes extensive studies of industrial research
and development, the development of manufacturing technology
in the United States, and the role of independent inventors
and entrepreneurs in the development of technology.
Hounshell
is the author of the award-winning books, From the
American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development
of Manufacturing Technology in the United States,
and (with John Kenly Smith, Jr.) Science and Corporate
Strategy: Du Pont: Du Pont R&D, 1902-1980. He is currently
working on a sequel to the first book and also a history
of the RAND Corporation from its creation to the end of
the Cold War.
In
EPP, Hounshell has collaborated with Ed Rubin (EPP/MechE)
and former Ph.D. student Margaret Taylor (EPP Ph.D. 2001,
now on the faculty of UC Berkeley) on studies of how air
pollution regulations have stimulated innovation in emissions
control technology. He and Rubin are now extending the
work to look at technologies for carbon management.
Beginning
in 1995, Hounshell coordinated an NSF-supported graduate
research and training program that has examined the Cold
War and its influence on science, technology and enterprise
in the United States.
Hounshell
has been a key player in creating the univer-sity's new
graduate program in Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Technological
Change. |
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Electric
System Security
The
terrorists attacks of September 11 highlighted the problem
of international terrorism and raised new concerns about
the vulnerability of large, industrial systems to attack.
The electric power system is particularly vulnerable because
it is widely distributed and much of it is essentially indefensible.
It is vulnerable to cyber as well as conventional attack
since the systems that operate it on a moment-to-moment
basis, as well as those that plan operations for the next
several days (e.g., power markets), generally consist of
distributed communication and computation networks. Further,
the electric power system must balance supply and demand
at every instant, so modest disruptions in key locations
can have major effects systemwide.
To
explore these issues Carnegie Mellon's new Electricity Center
teamed with the Carnegie Bosch Institute to run an invitational
workshop on the Carnegie Mellon campus on November 28-29
that examined the potential security and survivability aspects
of different future configurations of the electric power
system.
Workshop
participants agreed that a few parts of the power system,
such as nuclear power plants, dams, and large fuel storage
sites may need more physical protection. However, the most
important finding from the workshop is that the U.S. electric
power system is already designed and operated to respond
effectively to disruptions, including intentional attacks,
both physical and cyber.
The
workshop found that the most significant security problem
for the electric power system is that economic restructuring
of the industry, aimed at increasing competition and consumer
choice, has so far failed to give companies that operate
transmission systems incentives to invest in upgrades. Thus,
the nation's electric power system is more stressed today
than it has ever been in the past. Competitive markets ignore
collective objectives such as national security, so ensuring
the security and survivability of the electric power system
against terrorism (and natural stresses) must rely upon
regulation and economic incentives established by state
and federal governments.
Rather
than trying to build a fortress around the existing electric
power system, regulators should focus on resolving the institutional
and regulatory problems which currently beset the industry
in a way that encourages the system to evolve towards a
more resilient configuration that can quickly recover from
any disruption that nature or terrorists may create.
The
results of the workshop have been briefed to Congressional
staff as part of the current electricity restructuring debate.
A paper titled "Bolstering the Security of the Electric
Power System" appeared as the cover story in the Spring
2002 issue of Issues in Science and Technology.
Participants in electric system security workshop discussing
the impacts of ongoing industry restructuring.
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