|
Horace Mitchell, President, California
State University,
Bakersfield
Dr. Horace Mitchell became the fourth President of California State
University, Bakersfield (CSUB) in July 2004, after thirty-six years of experience
in higher education. Prior to this position, Dr. Mitchell was with the University of California,
Berkeley,
where he served as Vice Chancellor, Business and Administrative Services, and
affiliated professor, African American Studies. He also previously served as
the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life, and Associate
Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at UC Irvine. Dr.
Mitchell holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a master’s in counseling,
and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, all from Washington
University in St. Louis. Dr. Mitchell’s
professional memberships include the American Association for Higher
Education, the American Council on Education, the American Psychological
Association, and the Association of Black Psychologists. He has been
recognized widely for his many years of community service by civic,
non-profit, governmental, educational, and professional organizations. Dr.
Mitchell’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of multicultural
psychology and psychological assessment. He maintains his California license for private practice as
a psychologist.
|
|
Ray Watson, Fourth District Supervisor, County of Kern
Elected to the Board of Supervisors in
November of 2002 Supervisor Watson was re-elected to his third term
in 2008. Supervisor Watson represents the Fourth District
which includes the Westside of Kern County - Bakersfield, Frazier Park, Taft, Lost
Hills, Buttonwillow and Wasco. Ray Watson brings an impressive record
of community service, business experience, and education to the Kern County's
Fourth District. Having chosen Kern
County as his home for
over 25 years, Ray has been a contributing member of the community in a
variety of different ways. Ray has a long and extensive background in finance
and management including serving as a CPA for Ernst and Ernst, working in
Finance, Administration and Personnel for Time Life Broad Casting Company and
McGraw Hill-Broadcasting Company, and, over the course of 27 years, served as
Vice President/General Manager for television stations in Bakersfield and
Denver and as President of Ackerley Group television stations. He was
named Broadcaster of the Year in 2002 by the California Broadcasters Association.
Community service has also been a hallmark of Supervisor Watson's
career. As a past recipient of the
John Brock Community Service Award, he has served in multiple leadership
positions in local agencies including serving as President of the Greater Bakersfield
Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, and Downtown Business Association. He
has also been active on multiple committees such asCSUB President's Advisory
Committee, Bakersfield Convention and Visitor Bureau Board, and Kern Medical
Center Blue Ribbon Committee. He graduated from USC with a degree in
Accounting and has served in the U.S. Army Finance Corps. For more
information, please visit: http://www.co.kern.caus/bos/dist4/
|
|
Jean Fuller, California State
Assemblywoman, 32nd District
Jean Fuller (R-Bakersfield) was elected to the California State
Assembly in November 2006 to represent the 32nd Assembly District, which
includes Bakersfield, Ridgecrest,
Tehachapi, Taft, Kern River Valley, and the Frazier Mountain
communities. Fuller is a member of Assembly Republican Leader Sam
Blakeslee's leadership team and serves as Leader of the Water Policy
Team. Fuller is also a member of the Rural Caucus, a bipartisan group
of 43 Assembly Members and Senators who provide a strong, united voice in the
state legislature for residents of rural communities, and served as Chair of
the caucus during her first term in office. Assemblywoman Fuller also
serves as Vice-Chair of the Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee and is a
member of the State Allocation Board, the Assembly Agriculture Committee, the
Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee, and the Assembly Budget
Subcommittee on Education Finance. Her top legislative priorities are
to expand career technical education programs for high school students, to
improve California's
business climate, and to reduce the tax burden on hard-working families.
Fuller was born and raised in Kern
County. She attended
local schools and completed her Bachelor, Masters, and PhD degrees through
the California State
University and the University of California
systems. Fuller supplemented her educational training at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education, the University
of Southern California, and Exeter College
in Oxford, England. For more
information, please visit her website at: http://arc.asm.ca.gov/member/32/
|
|
Rob Negrini, Professor of Geology, California State
University, Bakersfield
Robert Negrini graduated in 1979 with
a B.A. cum laude in Geology from Amherst
College and in 1986
received a Ph.D. in Geology from UC Davis. He has worked as a Professor at
CSU Bakersfield since the Fall of 1985 and was selected as the CSUB
Outstanding Professor in 1997. Despite the teaching focus of the California State University
system, Rob Negrini has published 18 papers in well regarded peer-reviewed
publications including Geology, Journal of Geophysical Research, Earth and
Planetary Science Letters, Geophysical Journal International, etc. In
addition, he has been an author or coauthor associated with more than 65
presentations at meetings of professional societies. To fund this body of
research, Negrini has received grants from highly competitive grant programs
including the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Agriculture,
the California Department of Water Resources, and the Petroleum Research Fund
of the American Chemical Society. Currently he is funded by the NSF and by
contracts from Chevron, USA and Occidental Petroleum.
Negrini has served as both President and Vice-President of the San Joaquin
Geological Society, and worked on organizing committees for national and
regional meetings of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. He was
selected as the 2008 Educator of the Year by the Pacific Section of the AAPG.
|
|
Sally Benson, Director, Global Climate & Energy
Project, Stanford
University
Dr. Sally Benson joined Stanford
University in 2007 as a Research
Professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering in the School of Earth Sciences. A ground water
hydrologist and reservoir engineer, Benson has conducted research to address
a range of issues related to energy and the environment. Her research
interests include geologic storage of CO2 in deep underground
formations, technologies and energy systems for a low-carbon future,
biogeochemistry of selenium, and geotechnical instrumentation for subsurface
characterization and monitoring. She is an internationally recognized expert
on geological storage of carbon dioxide in geological formations and was a
coordinating lead author for the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide
Capture and Storage that was published in 2005. Dr. Benson is also the
Director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) at Stanford, where
she is responsible for guiding the development of GCEP’s diverse research
portfolio.
|
|
Roger Aines, Program Leader, Carbon Fuel Cycle
Program, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Roger holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from Carleton College, and Doctor of Philosophy in
Geochemistry from the California Institute of Technology. He has been at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory since 1984, working on nuclear waste disposal, environmental
remediation, application of stochastic methods to inversion and data fusion,
management of carbon emissions including separation technology, and
monitoring and verification methods for sequestration. Roger is actively
evaluating the role that direct capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
might play in a future where negative carbon emissions are required to
maintain climate stability. He is leading an effort to develop catalysts to
increase the rate of carbon dioxide capture from gases, and he is developing
technology to utilize brine in sequestration aquifers as a fresh water
source. Roger’s career has involved a close coupling of scientific research,
engineering, field demonstration, and assessment of future development needs
for technology with an emphasis on the transition of scientific projects from
benchtop to pilot and field scale. During the 1990s he led the LLNL effort
developing thermal remediation technology for DNAPLs, leading to the cleanup
and closure of one of the most difficult superfund sites at Visalia, California.
Roger led LLNL’s development of stochastic computational inversion and data
fusion techniques known as the stochastic engine. This is currently being applied to monitor
oil field injection and CO2 sequestration.
Roger holds eight patents in the area of in situ degradation of
organic chemicals through heating, simulation of steam-driven underground
processes in heterogeneous media, and the mechanisms of thermally assisted
remediation. Roger is a Senior Scientist in the Physical and Life Sciences
Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He leads LLNL’s Carbon
Fuel Cycle Program, which takes an integrated view of the energy, climate,
and environmental aspects of carbon-based fuel production and use. It supports DOE projects in sequestration
technology development for capture, and underground coal gasification. It
provides key support to major international sequestration projects at
InSalah, Weyburn, and the U.S. Partnerships.
George Peridas, Science Fellow, Climate Center,
Natural Resources Defense Council
George Peridas is a scientist,
working at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center.
He is involved in NRDC's efforts in Carbon Capture & Sequestration
technology, policy and regulation, and also plays an active role in the
organization's state and federal advocacy efforts. Prior to joining NRDC in
October 2006, George worked as a Senior Consultant on energy markets for
Pöyry in the UK.
His expertise includes power, oil, natural gas and renewables markets, and emissions
trading. In that role, he worked extensively for the power and oil/gas
industry, the finance community and government. He was part of a team that
investigated the economics of CCS for the Department of Trade and Industry of
the UK
government. George received his M.Eng. and Ph.D.
degrees in mechanical engineering from the University
of Oxford and his M.Sc. in
Environmental Science & Policy from Imperial
College, London. He comes from Athens, Greece.
|
|
Richard Chapman, President, Kern Economic Development
Corporation
Richard Chapman was appointed
President & CEO of the Kern Economic Development Corporation (KEDC) in
November 2006. Chapman’s previous
positions included Executive Director of the Buckeye (Arizona)
Valley Development, Inc., and Vice President for the Economic Development
Council of Seattle and King County. He has also held a research position with
Prudential Securities. Chapman holds a
Bachelor’s degree in Finance from Georgetown
University and a Masters of Business
Administration in International Marketing from American University. Chapman hails from Pinehurst, North Carolina--The
Golf Capital of the World.
|
|
Senator Dean Florez, California State
Senator, 16th District
Senator Dean Florez was born and raised in the Central
Valley and has proudly represented the region in the State
Legislature for nearly a decade. He was first elected to the State
Assembly in 1998, serving two terms before being elected to the State Senate
in 2002. Senator Florez was elevated to the position of Senate Majority
Leader in November 2008, the Senate’s second most powerful position. As
Senate Majority Leader, Senator Florez is responsible for setting the
Democratic agenda and the Senate’s Floor operations. Florez has been an
outspoken leader in the areas of clean air, equality in education, food
safety, animal rights, high-speed rail, government accountability and
infrastructure financing and development. In his decade in the
Legislature, Florez has served as chairman of numerous committees with jurisdiction
over agriculture; water, parks and wildlife; banking, commerce and
international trade; and has spearheaded numerous investigative hearings with
a strong focus on government oversight. Florez is a
Harvard-trained municipal finance professional, having received his MBA from
Harvard in 1993. He received a Bachelors of Arts degree in Political
Science from UCLA. The grandson of farm laborers, Florez spent his
early years in the Colonia outside of the city of Shafter,
in Kern County. He still lives in his
hometown of Shafterwhere his mother, Fran, currently serves as Mayor - with
his wife Elsa, their daughter Faith and son Sean. For more information,
please visit his website at: http://dist16.casen.govoffice.com/
|
|
Jan Gillespie, Professor of Geology, California State
University, Bakersfield
Dr. Jan Gillespie received a M.S. in
Geology from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and a PhD in Geology
from the University
of Wyoming. In private
practice she has worked as a geologist for the USGS, as a geological engineer
for Tenneco Oil's Pacific Coast Division in Bakersfield and as a consulting
professional geologist for ARCO, SI International and SERCO-NA. Dr.
Gillespie currently teaches petroleum geology and basic well log
interpretation seminars for the Pacific Coast Division of the Petroleum
Technology Transfer Council. She is a registered geologist in California and has
been teaching petroleum, ground water and GIS classes at CSU Bakerfield since
1991.
|
|
Bill
Roby, President & General Manager, Mid-Continent Business Unit,
Occidental Petroleum Corporation
Bill Roby is currently the President and General Manager for
Occidental’s US Mid-Continent Business Unit with operations in the Rocky
Mountains, Permian
Basin, and
Kansas/Oklahoma regions. Within Oxy, he has held positions that include
Vice-President of Worldwide Engineering and Technical Services,
Vice-President of Business Development, and Vice-President of Eastern
Hemisphere Operations Support. Bill graduated from Louisiana State University
(LSU) with a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 1981 and has worked in the oil
& gas industry since that time. Prior to joining Oxy in 2000, he worked
for Shell Oil from 1981-1997 and Altura Energy from 1997-2000. Bill is
married with 4 grown children and 2 grandchildren.
|
|
Larry
Myer, Technical Director, West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration
Partnership, California
Energy Commission
Dr. Larry Myer is a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, Earth Sciences Division, where he has conducted research in
geophysics and geomechanics since 1981. He has been leading research
activities in geologic sequestration since 1999. He holds a joint appointment with the
California Energy Commission, Public Interest Energy Research Program, where
he is Technical Director of the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration
Partnership. The Partnership is evaluating carbon dioxide sequestration
options and opportunities, for the west coast of North
America. He holds a Ph.D. in Geological Engineering from the University of California,
Berkeley.
|
|
Susan Hovorka, Principal Investigator, Bureau of
Economic Geology, University of Texas
Dr. Susan D. Hovorka is a Senior Research Scientist at the Gulf Coast
Carbon Center,
Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, at The University
of Texas at Austin. She has worked on diverse topics related to
water quality protection as well as reservoir characterization to enhance oil
production. Her current research focuses on assessment of the cost, safety
and effectiveness of subsurface geologic sequestration of CO2 as a mechanism
for reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. Dr. Hovorka is the
principal investigator of the Gulf
Coast Carbon
Center, a
10-industry/academic partnership working on economically viable approaches to
geologic sequestration of carbon. She is the project lead for the “Stacked
Storage” test of the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership
(SECARB) underway at Denbury’s Cranfield EOR project. She is also leading a
research team in the final stages of completion of the two-phase Frio Pilot,
the first U.S.
field test of storage of CO2 in brine-filled sandstones, also funded by
DOE-NETL.
|
|
Les Clark, Executive Vice President, Independent
Oil Producers Association
Les Clark served as Vice President of Independent Oil Producers' Agency
from 1980 to 1999 at which time he assumed the position of Executive
V.P. IOPA is a membership organization comprised of independent oil
companies operating mainly in the San
Joaquin Valley.
Les is responsible for reviewing and analyzing all regulatory issues and
advising his members of such. He is the principal contact with all
Federal, State, and San Joaquin
Valley officials and
staffs. Les has been a resident of Taft most of his life, attending
schools in that area until completing his education at Fresno State
University where he
received a B.A. in Education. His basic knowledge of the oil industry
was obtained from part time employment with Atlantic Richfield and Petrotherm
while attending school. Subsequently, Belridge Oil Company and Shell
Oil Company employed him prior to assuming IOPA'sSan Joaquin Valley
operations. He has remained actively involved and held leadership
positions in multiple local organizations as well as several county, state
and federal agency work groups, task forces, and committees over the course
of his career.
Dirk
Baron, Chair Department of Geology, California
State University,
Bakersfield
Dr. Dirk Baron is a Professor of
Geology and the Chair of the Department of Geology at California
State University,
Bakersfield. His research focuses on the thermodynamic
properties of minerals of environmental relevance such as sulfates and chromates. He is also working on groundwater issues in
the San Joaquin
Valley. Dr. Baron has over 20 years of experience
in environmental geochemistry and hydrogeology in academia and private
industry and is a registered professional geologist in the state of California. He also has a long-standing interest and
engagement in science education and K-12 outreach and is currently the
principal investigator for a National Science Foundation Math and Science
Partnership project between CSU Bakersfield and the Kern High
School District.
|
