Yvonne Addassi

Ms. Yvonne Najah Addassi received her Master of Science in Ecology and Environmental Policy from the University of California, Davis in 1997 and her Bachelors of Sciences in Biology in 1985. Currently, she is a staff environmental scientist for the Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response for the California Department of Fish and Game. Her primary responsibilities include program coordination for the statewide licensing, approval and use of oil spill cleanup agents as well as the use of applied response technologies (ART), such as in-situ burning and dispersants; serves as state liaison for applied response technologies including Western States Task Force ART subcommittee, Regional IX Regional Response Team ART subcommittee; development and implementation of state-policies for the use of ARTs, specifically in-situ burning and dispersants, coordination of three dispersant area subcommittees utilizing net environmental analysis NEBA) as a means of trade-off quantification. Ms. Addassi has published several papers on in-situ burning, dispersant policy development and the use of NEBA, is an advisory board member for the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, serves on the board of directors for the California Association of Professional Scientists and served on the National Academy of Science's committee on Understanding Oil spill Dispersants: Efficacy and Effects.

James R. Clark

Dr. James R. Clark is a Distinguished Scientific Associate who joined Exxon in 1992, after a twelve-year career in research at USEPA. He earned a B.S. in Fisheries at University of Michigan, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Zoology/Aquatic Ecology from Virginia Tech. Dr. Clark has extensive experience in environmental assessments of petroleum industry activities, complex effluents, contaminated soils and sediments, pesticides and industrial chemicals. Currently, he heads ExxonMobil's Oil Spill Research Program for Refining and Supply and plays a corporate and industry leadership role in the development and evaluation of environmentally relevant techniques and strategies for oil and chemical spill response.

Roger Helm

Dr. Helm received his Doctorate Degree in Biological Ecology from the University of California at Davis in 1990 and his Master's Degree in Marine Biology from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in 1979. His scientific training has concentrated on marine vertebrate and invertebrate ecology. He has written numerous technical papers on these subjects and coauthored a book Marine Mammals of California. Dr. Helm began working on natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) following the grounding of the Exxon Valdez. He has worked on NRDA cases in Japan, Hawaii, American Samoa, Alaska, and throughout the western US. Since 1994 he has managed and directed the NRDA and spill response program for Region 1 of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. During that time he has lead 18 and supported 25 other NRDA cases. In conjunction with other Natural Resource Trustees and EPA, well over $150,000,000 has been spent in Region 1 for NRDA related natural resource restoration and remediation projects.

Robert Haddad

Bob Haddad earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Oceanography at UNC, Chapel Hill with a focus on sedimentary organic geochemistry. Following post-doctoral fellowships at NASA and at Stanford Univ., he joined Unocal’s Petroleum Geochemistry Research Group and provided in-house company-wide consultation on environmental liability issues. While at Unocal, Bob also provided expert witness support in Forensic Geochemistry and technical leadership for NRDA in Unocal’s worldwide emergency response organization. After leaving Unocal, Bob was responsible for strategic and technical leadership on OPA NRDA cases as West Coast Regional Risk Manager for ENTRIX, Inc. and then as a Vice President for ARCADIS-JSA. Prior to joining NOAA, Dr. Haddad was President and Principal Scientist for Applied Geochemical Strategies, Inc. In this role, he provided strategic and technical liability consulting for clients (OPA and CERCLA NRDA and non-NRDA issues) and expert witness testimony in various aspects of forensic geochemistry. Bob is currently working for the NOAA as the Chief of the Assessment & Restoration Division. In this position, he also co-leads NOAA’s Damage Assessment Remediation & Restoration Program (DARRP). Bob maintains his position as Adjunct Professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo where he has worked with faculty in the Environmental Biotechnology Institute and taught Oceanography.

Charlie Henry

Charlie Henry is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Environmental Scientist and the Scientific Support Coordinator (SSC) for Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle. As a SSC, Henry is responsible for managing scientific issues and natural resource trustee concerns that arise during oil and hazardous chemical spills and providing direct technical expertise and consultation to the lead Federal On-Scene Coordinator during an emergency response. Henry has some 20 years of spill response experience responding to oil and chemical spills. The first 13 of those years were spent at Louisiana State University as a Research Associate under contract to NOAA to provide chemistry support during emergency events and research spill response technology such as dispersants and bioremediation. Henry has responded to more than one hundred oil and chemical spills including the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, the 1991 Kuwait Oil Fires, and the 2000 Jessica Oil Spill in the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Henry responded on-scene as part of the United States Coast Guard team response to six major oil spills, numerous smaller oil spills, and thousands of orphaned HAZMAT containers (cylinders, drums, totes, and tanks).

Dennis M. King

Dennis M. King specializes in environmental/economic tradeoff analyses, ecosystem valuation & natural resource accounting and much more in the realm of economic modeling and cost effectiveness analyses. He is currently at Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Maryland since 1991.  His career has involved research/teaching/consulting on matters related to environmental economics, natural resource management, and natural-resource related industries and markets. Author of over one hundred reports, papers, and book chapters dealing with economic, business, and trade issues, mostly related to ecological/economic linkages, environmental restoration, and international trade in natural resource products.  Project manager on over fifty interdisciplinary science/policy research projects dealing with complex scientific/engineering/economic issues.  Advisor to national and international natural resource and development agencies, small and large business interests, environmental organizations, and insurance and financial institutions.  Expert witness before U.S. and state congressional committees, at numerous administrative law judge hearings, and in over forty cases involving private litigation over natural resource-related economic losses.  Served on scientific committees of the National Research Council and the National Academies of Science, and as senior economic consultant to United Nations, World Bank, U.S. congressional committees, and various national industry/government councils.

Thomas Leschine

Thomas Leschine has been at the University of Washington's School of Marine Affairs since 1983, becoming the School's fifth director in 2003. His research interests are in environmental decision making and public policy, especially as applied to marine environmental management and marine pollution control. He has been an active member of numerous National Research Council committees, chairing the NRC's Committee on the Remediation of Buried and Tank Wastes (under the Board on Radioactive Waste Management) from 1996-2000. That Committee's signature report is the much cited Long-Term Institutional Management of U.S. Dept. of Energy Legacy Waste Sites (2000). Prof. Leschine previously served as Historian to the U.S Coast Guard, where he was editor-in-chief and principal writer of the Federal On Scene Coordinator's Report on the T/V Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (1993). He also served on the NRC's Committee on Risk Assessment and Management of Marine Systems, whose 1998 report examined the effectiveness of risk management measures put in place in Prince William Sound following the Exxon Valdez spill. He served as Commissioner of Marine Pilotage for the State of Washington for six years until 1998, having been appointed by two successive Washington Governors. In the late 1980s he led a project funded by the Washington Legislature that resulted in a new approach for placing a monetary value on the natural resource damages caused by oil spills in state waters. Leschine obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics (mathematical logic) from the University of Pittsburgh in 1975.

Robert “Buzz” Martin, Ph.D.

Dr. Martin has been with the Texas General Land Office’s (GLO) Oil Spill Prevention and Response program for 15 years where he is both the Director of Scientific Support and the State Scientific Support Coordinator (State SSC). As the State SSC, he is an emergency responder and the state’s lead in providing on-scene technical and scientific support to oil spill response activities. In this role, he assists with identifying protection priorities and in managing shoreline cleanup assessment teams (SCAT), aerial reconnaissance, and alternative countermeasure activities. As the Director of Scientific Support, he develops decision-support products for the spill response community (such as the Texas Coastal Oil Spill Planning & Response CD Toolkit), manages coastal Environmental Sensitivity Index and Habitat Priority mapping projects, and conducts workshops to train spill response personnel. Since 1994, he has been engaged in operational ocean observations and forecasts as both the program originator and the GLO’s program manager for the Texas Automated Buoy System (TABS) and modeling program.  At the regional level, he has been a member in the Regional Response Team for Region 6 (including a 5-year term as the science & technology chairman and member of the RRT 6 Executive Secretariat) and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS).

Scott Pegau, Ph.D.

Scott Pegau is OSRI Research Program Manager. Scott was most recently with the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve in Homer, where he has been a researcher for the past five years. Scott grew up in Alaska and graduated from high school in Nome. After serving in the Navy on submarine duty, he attended University of Alaska Fairbanks and graduated with a degree in physics. He received his Doctoral degree in Oceanography from Oregon State University. Scott served as a researcher and teaching professor at Oregon State. Scott and his wife Cathy, who is a writer of fiction, have two young daughters. Scott likes to read, fish, hunt, garden and manage a house full of pets. As OSRI Research Program Manager, Scott develops annual and strategic plans for a grant program focused on oil pollution issues in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. He oversees peer reviews of proposals, monitors grant contracts, and provides leadership in planning research programs and work plans in collaboration with the OSRI Board and Scientific and Technical Committee. The Research Program Manager works with the Executive Director to develop and maintain cooperative agreements with other organizations for research and education programs.