Subject: Announcement of Professor David Dzombak as Director of SEER

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Professor David Dzombak as Director of the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research (SEER) effective May 1, 2007. SEER’s charter is to increase Carnegie Mellon’s visibility and impact in environmental research and education through seeding, developing, and enhancing collaborative projects across the campus. SEER has allocated more than $300,000 in grants to a variety of research and educational initiatives, including industry panel sessions, media boot camps and fellowships across campus.

SEER was established in 2004 through a generous gift from Carnegie Mellon Trustee and alumnus W. Lowell Steinbrenner and his wife, Jan. Professor Chris Hendrickson served as the founding Director of SEER and I want to take this opportunity to thank him for his leadership in establishing SEER as a campus-wide entity.

SEER is part of a multi-pronged strategy to establish Carnegie Mellon at the forefront of research in Energy and Environment. SEER’s initiatives in Environmental technology and policy complement strategic efforts in Energy technology and policy. These Energy related efforts include, for example, the Electricity Industry Center, the Center for Nano-enabled Energy, and the growing partnership between Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh, West Virginia University, and National Energy Technology Laboratory in the area of Advanced Energy Systems.

David has been a member of the Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty since 1989, when he joined as an assistant professor. He is currently the Walter J. Blenko Sr. Professor of Environmental Engineering, and also Associate Dean in the College of Engineering. He is a member of the Environmental Engineering Committee of the EPA Science Advisory Board, and a member of the EPA National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology, Environmental Technology Subcommittee. He chairs the National Research Council’s Committee on the Mississippi River and Clean Water Act. David also is an associate editor of the journal Environmental Science and Technology, and has served on the editorial boards of the journals Water Environment Research and Ground Water.

cc: President Cohon, Provost Kamlet, Vice Presidents, and Deans