Dr. David J. Galas is Chairman of the Board of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. He is currently Senior Vice President for Strategic Partnerships and Professor for the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), a nonprofit research institute in Seattle, WA, with the mission of transforming biological and medical research by creating and using systems approaches to unravel the workings of complex biological systems.  He is a faculty member at ISB where he carries out his own research programs.  Dr. Galas is a co-founder of Keck Graduate Institute, and served as KGI's first Chief Academic Officer and Chancellor. Prior to his arrival at KGI, Dr. Galas served as President and Chief Scientific Officer of Seattle-based Chiroscience R&D, based on a start-up company he co-founded Darwin Molecular. Dr. Galas was Director for Health and Environment Research of the U.S. Department of Energy, where he directed the Human Genome Project. Before his service in Washington Dr. Galas was  Professor and chairman of molecular biology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Galas received MS and PhD degrees in physics from the University of California, Davis-Livermore. He earned an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include molecular biology, human genetics, complex biological network analysis and the development of new technologies for the life sciences. He is a life time National Associate of the National Academy of Science.

Dr. Jay Davis is the President of the Hertz Foundation, which funds graduate studies in the applied physical sciences and engineering. Jay is a nuclear physicist trained at the Universities of Texas and Wisconsin. During his three-decade career at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he built accelerators for research in nuclear physics and for materials science in support of the fusion program. In 1988, Davis founded the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, the World’s most versatile and productive AMS laboratory, creating isotopic tracing and tagging tools for research programs in the geosciences, toxicology, nutritional sciences, oncology, archaeology, and nuclear forensics. At the time he left LLNL to join the Department of Defense in 1998, he was the Associate Director for Earth and Environmental Sciences.

In the national security component of his career, he worked to develop techniques for arms control treaties, was a senior member of the NEST program, served as an inspector in Iraq for UNSCOM after the First Gulf War, and then served as the founding Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. As Director of DTRA, he merged three DoD organizations to create DoD’s operating and technical focus for dealing with all aspects of weapons of mass destruction.

Among his honors are Phi Beta Kappa, an Atomic Energy Commission Postdoctoral Fellowship, and being twice given the Distinguished Public Service Medal, DoD’s highest civilian award. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and serves on its Panel on Public Affairs. He currently serves on the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board and the Board on Army Science and Technology of the National Academy of Sciences. He also serves on the Board of Distinguished Advisors for the American Committees on Foreign Affairs. Jay’s continuing interests are in the areas of nuclear forensics, renewal of the US nuclear force, management of change in organizations, and counter-terrorism. Married to Mary McIntyre Davis for forty-six years, he has two grown children, four grandchildren, and happily operates a small Livermore vineyard, producing Petite Syrah grapes for boutique winemaking.

Dr. David received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Wichita State University (1975), an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (1976), and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (1981).
Dr. David frequently provides speeches, interviews, lectures, briefings, and articles on the many facets of homeland security as well as technology-related issues. She is the coauthor of three books on Signal Processing Algorithms and has authored or coauthored numerous papers and book chapters.

Strategic Planning and Technology Consultant
Los Gatos, CA

Gilbert F. Decker is a private consultant for several clients including the Boeing Corporation, the United States Navy, and Walt Disney Imagineering, where he was previously the Executive Vice President of Engineering and Production.

Mr. Decker served as a Commissioned Officer in the US Army, and as a Colonel in the US Army Reserve. Before becoming a private consultant, he held several distinguished positions, including President and CEO of the Penn Central Federal Systems Company, President and CEO of Acurex Corporation, and Assistant Secretary of the Army/Research, Development, and Acquisition.

Honors presented to Mr. Decker include the Distinguished Public Service Medal from the Department of Defense and the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal from the Department of the Army.

Mr. Decker currently serves on the National Advisory Council for The Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering, and on the Board of Army Science & Technology at the National Academy of Sciences. He acts as the Director of Alliant TechSystems, Anteon Corporation, and the Allied Research Corporation. Mr. Decker is also a Trustee for the Hertz Foundation and for the Association of the US Army. Education

Mr. Decker holds a Bachelor of Engineering Science, Electrical Engineering, from The John Hopkins University and a Master of Science, Operations Research, from Stanford University. He undertook his military education at the US Army Command & General Staff College as well as at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

Applied Minds, Inc.

Dr. Hillis is Chairman and co-Founder of Applied Minds, a company that invents, designs, creates and prototypes high-technology products and services for a broad range of applications. Previously, Dr. Hillis was Vice President of Research and Development at Walt Disney Imagineering and a Disney Fellow. Before that he co-founded Thinking Machines Corp., a leading innovator in massively parallel supercomputers and RAID disk arrays.

While completing his Ph.D. at MIT, Dr. Hillis pioneered the concepts that form the foundation of most supercomputers, as well as the RAID disk array technology used to store large databases. Dr. Hillis holds over 80 U.S. patents and is the designer of a 10,000-year mechanical clock.

Dr. Hillis received a Hertz Foundation Fellowship at MIT from 1978-1984, is a recipient of the Hertz Foundation Thesis Prize, and is on the Board of Directors of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation.

Joanne Isham joined L-1 Identity Solutions in 2008 as the Senior Vice President for Washington Operations. She is the leader in planning, developing and executing the Federal market strategy for the world’s largest supplier of identity products, solutions and services.

Prior to joining L-1, Ms. Isham was the Chief Operating Office of High Performance Technologies. Her leadership responsibilities included the management and operational oversight of the firm specializing in computational science, enterprise technology and planning, systems architecture and engineering and secure software development.

Formerly Ms. Isham was the Vice President, Deputy General Manager of Network Systems at BAE Systems. In addition to managing day-to-day operations, she was directly responsible for identifying strategic opportunities for new mission focus.

Ms. Isham was also a senior official at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). From September 2001 until her retirement in 2006, she served as Deputy Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Previous to that assignment, she served as the Deputy Director for Science and Technology at the CIA, the principal executive overseeing the CIA’s scientific and technical programs. Before that assignment, Ms. Isham was as the CIA’s Associate Deputy Director of Science and Technology.

Ms. Isham held several other senior management positions in the CIA and other Intelligence Community organizations, including Director of Congressional Affairs for CIA, where she oversaw the congressional and legislative interests of the Director of Central Intelligence.  She also served as the Deputy Director of the Resource Management Office of the Community Management Staff (CMS) and as CMS’s director of Program Analysis. In these positions, she was responsible for budget and resource issues spanning the Intelligence Community. Ms. Isham also spent a number of years on assignment to the National Reconnaissance Office as Director of Legislative Affairs and a Program Manager.

She has received numerous awards throughout her career including the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award, the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement, the CIA and NGA Distinguished Intelligence Medals and the DIA Director’s Award.

Ms. Isham is a member of the Advisory Group for the Director of National Intelligence; Board of Trustees Analytic Services, Inc.; and serves on the Boards of Silicon Graphics Incorporated: Applied Analysis, Incorporated; and The Sanborn Map Company. She is also a member of the President’s Roundtable and several Dean’s councils at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Ms. Isham is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.

Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
The University of Texas at Austin

Hans Mark has resumed his former position at the University of Texas at Austin having completed his assignment as Director of Defense Research and Engineering for the Department of Defense (1998-2001). Prior to this presidential appointed position, he held the John J. McKetta Centennial Energy Chair in Engineering as a Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics. Dr. Mark was Chancellor of the University of Texas System from 1984 until 1992.

Dr. Mark is a Fellow of the American Physics Society and The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has formerly been a Deputy Administrator for NASA in Washington, DC, Secretary of the United States Air Force, Director of the NASA Ames Research Center and has taught at several universities including the University of California, Berkeley and MIT. Dr. Mark is the author of several books and articles. He was the recipient of two Distinguished Service Medals from NASA in 1972 and 1984 and two from the Department of Defense in 1981 and 2001.

He holds an A.B. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, a Ph.D. from MIT and has received six honorary doctorate degrees.

Princeton University

Professor Richard Miles attended Stanford University and received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering in 1966, his Masters' Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1967, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1972. At Stanford he was a Fannie and John Hertz Fellow and an NSF Postdoctoral Research Associate. He joined the faculty at Princeton University in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering in the fall of 1972. He was promoted to Associated Professor in 1978 and Full Professor in 1982. From 1980 to 1996 he served as Chairman of the Princeton University Engineering Physics Program and from 1994 to 2000 as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department.

Professor Miles research is primarily on the use of lasers, electron beams, microwave and magnetic devices to measure, control, accelerate, extract power and precondition gas flows for hypersonic fluid dynamics and propulsion applications as well as for the study of plasmas, gas mixtures, and nonequilibrium phenomena. Among his accomplishments at Princeton are the first use of laser induced fluorescence for planar flow field visualization and measurement (1975), the invention of a laser collision warning system (1981), the development of RELIEF (Raman Excitation plus Laser Induced Electronic Fluorescence) flow tagging of air and PHANTOMM (Photo Activated Non-intrusive Tracking of Molecular Motion) (with Dr. Walter Lempert) flow tagging in water (1987 and 1993, respectively), and the development of Filtered Rayleigh Scattering (1992) for imaging flow velocity, temperature and density. He is currently examining spectral methods for missile warning and for the detection of hazardous substances by light scattering, and he is developing new methods for the use of high-power microwaves, electron beams and lasers to drive and control aerodynamic phenomena for MHD power extraction, boundary layer separation control, steering and drag reduction of hypersonic vehicles. Together with Prof. Brown he invented the Radiatively Driven Hypersonic Wind Tunnel (MARIAH II), which is currently being developed for ground testing of hypersonic vehicles up to Mach 12.

Professor Miles is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fannie & John Hertz Foundation, a member of the Elmer A. Sperry Award Board and a judge for the National Siemens Westinghouse High School Competition. He is a life member of the American Physical Society, a Senior Member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a Fellow of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and is the recipient of the 2000 AIAA Aerodynamic Measurement Technology Award. He has 6 patents and over 290 technical publications.

Partner Neuberger and Berman, LLC

Hertz Fellow
CEO and Director, Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute

Paul D. Nielsen is the director of Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute (SEI). Paul's leadership of the SEI started on August 1, 2004. The SEI is sponsored by the Department of Defense and performs research across the broad range of software engineering--architecture, product lines, performance critical systems, integration of software intensive systems, process improvement, measurement and analysis, and network security. The SEI works with researchers and software practitioners around the world to improve the skills and productivity of the software community.

Prior to his arrival, he served in the U.S. Air Force. He retired from the Air Force as a major general after 32 years of distinguished service. Nielsen relinquished his command of the Air Force Research Laboratory on June 25, 2004. For over four years, he managed the Air Force's science and technology budget of more than $3 billion annually and directed the efforts of the laboratory's 8,700 men and women at ten sites across the United States. He also was the Air Force's technology executive officer.

Nielsen entered the Air Force in 1972 as a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy. He served at three product centers and three laboratories, including assignments at the Secretary of the Air Forces Office of Special Projects and the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. As a senior officer, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, commanded the Air Force's Rome Laboratory, and was the operations chief of the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center. He was the director of plans for the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the vice commander of the Aeronautical Systems Center.

Nielsen received a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics from the U.S. Air Force Academy; a master of science degree in applied science from the University of California, Davis; an MBA from the University of New Mexico; and a Ph.D. in plasma physics from the University of California, Davis. He was a Hertz Foundation Fellow during his years at the University of California, Davis. He also graduated from the National War College at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C.

Nielsen is a Fellow of both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). His military awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, and the Legion of Merit. He is currently serving as a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.

Director, Secretary, and General Counsel

Thomas Silk holds undergraduate and law degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. After law school he spent four years in Washington, D.C. as a federal appellate court litigator with the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

After his return to the Bay Area, Tom founded Silk, Adler & Colvin, a San Francisco law firm specializing in providing legal advice and counsel to domestic and international philanthropic and nonprofit organizations, consulting with company foundations, and advising individual philanthropists.

Tom has consulted with the Asia Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund on nonprofit law development in the Asia Pacific region and in Central and Eastern Europe, and he is the editor and co-author of Philanthropy and Law in Asia. Tom has published many articles and has given frequent talks on the taxation of exempt organizations and on charitable law, including the governance of charitable organizations.

Tom is an adviser to the American Law Institute project on Principles of Nonprofit Law, adirector of CompassPoint, a member of the Advisory Board of The Exempt Organizations Tax Review, and a trustee and secretary of the Hertz Foundation. Tom and his wife, Suzanne Vinson Silk, share three wonderful children and six terrific grandchildren.

President, Sistos, Inc.
Los Alamos, NM

Sid Singer retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1994 following an illustrious career that began in 1956 when he joined the staff. Since retirement, Sid has been active in economic development in North Central New Mexico, in public service, and in real estate development in Santa Fe and Los Alamos. His company SISTOS, Inc. stands for Science in Service to Society.

A community activist, Sid Singer has worked with the community of Los Alamos in a major renovation of the downtown, chairing The Main Street Future Committee for a new design for downtown. In addition, Sid has served and serves on numerous civic and cultural state and local boards. In 1996, Sid Singer received the New Mexico Distinguished Public Service Award for his business and civic activities and was declared Citizen of the Year by the Los Alamos County Chamber of Commerce.

A graduate of Wayne State University with a major in physics and mathematics, Sid received a MS and PhD in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Illinois graduate school. Sid and his wife Elizabeth Allred continue as community leaders in Los Alamos and Santa Fe.

President Emeritus
Professor Emeritus, University of California

Dr. Wilson K. Talley is President-Emeritus of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. He served as President from 1972 to 1999.

He has held a variety of positions within the University of California and with the Federal Government, as well as with industry. Now Professor Emeritus in the Department of Applied Science, University of California, Davis/Livermore, he was a member of the faculty from 1963 to 1991. From 1971 to 1974 he was Assistant Vice President for Academic Planning and Program Review of the University of California, Statewide. Other administrative assignments within the University of California include Vice-Chair and Acting Chair of the Department of Applied Science in 1968-69 (just before he left to spend a year as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as a White House Fellow). After his return to California in 1970, he was first a consultant to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and then Leader, Theoretical Physics Division. From 1991 to 1994, he was Assistant to the Director of LLNL.

Dr. Talley served as the Assistant Administrator for Research and Development in the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency from December 1974 to June 1977. Immediately prior to joining EPA, Dr. Talley was the Study Director of Nelson Rockefellers Commission on Critical Choices for Americans.

In 1978 he became a member of the Army Science Board, appointed Vice Chair in 1981 and Chair from 1983 to 1986. He rejoined the Army Science Board in 1994 and became Chair in 1995, serving until April 1996. From 1989 to 1993, was a member of the Army Surgeon Generals Medical R&D Advisory Committee He was a member of the National Science Foundations Advisory Committee on Mathematical and Physical Sciences. He served as a member of several Technical Advisory Boards of such companies as Johnson Controls, Inc., and Phoenix Laser Systems, Inc.

A life member of the American Physical Society, he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He was a member of the 1980-81 Presidential Transition Team, dealing with policy issues in space and national defense. In 1987-88, Dr. Talley worked for the Bush-for-President National Campaign, not only on the Research Staff, but also as a speaker in the campaign in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dr. Talley is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, with an A.B. in physics, a Masters in physics from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He resides with his wife, Helen, in Davis, California.

Dr. Thomas Weaver is Senior Fellowship Interviewer for the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, as well as a member of the Board of Directors. In this capacity, he coordinates the process for selecting and mentoring the Graduate Fellowship in the applied physical sciences and engineering offered by the Foundation. He is also well known for his pioneering research in understanding the evolution of massive stars and supernova, as well as the production of the chemical elements in such stars and the design of and demonstration of x-ray lasers.

He has received many honors for his work, including the Department of Energys E.O. Lawrence Award. Dr. Weaver worked for 28 years in the Physics Department at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where in addition to his research, he served as the Leader of the X-ray Laser Program and the General Studies Division Leader. His current research interests have expanded to include theoretical biology and an exploration of the evolution and nature of complex systems, mind/brain operation and the associated phenomena of consciousness.

Senior Fellowship Interviewer
Directors Technical Staff, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Dr. Lowell Wood is a member of the Director's Technical Staff at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, where he has worked in a variety of capacities for the past 38 years. During this same time, Dr. Wood has served as an interviewer of applicants for the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, which supports graduate studies in the applied physical sciences. He has also served as an officer and member of the Board of Directors of the Hertz Foundation. He continues to serve on various advisory groups supporting the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

Dr. Wood's professional interests center in science and technology applied to national security problems, and extend more generally to national issues having a significant technical component. Dr. Wood received his bachelors degrees in Chemistry and Math in 1962 and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics in 1965 from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Director Emeritus
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.
Cambridge, MA

New York, NY