NWTRB Board Member
Updated September 21, 2001

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On June 29, 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed Jared Cohon to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. President Clinton appointed Dr. Cohon chairman on January 17, 1997.

Dr. Cohon is president of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has more than 25 years of teaching and research experience, has written one book, and is author, coauthor, or editor of more than 80 professional publications. Among the awards that Dr. Cohon has received is the 1996 Joan Hodges Queneau Medal for outstanding engineering achievement in environmental conservation, awarded jointly by the American Association of Engineering Societies and the National Audubon Society. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi (National Engineering Honor Society) and of Sigma Xi (Scientific Research Society). Dr. Cohon is a registered Professional Engineer.

Dr. Cohon brings to the Board special expertise as a national authority on environmental and water resource systems analysis. His research interests focus on multiobjective programming, a technique for decision-making in situations with multiple conflicting objectives. He also has focused on water resources planning and management in the United States, South America, and Asia and on energy facility siting, including nuclear waste shipping and storage. In addition to his academic experience, he served as legislative assistant for energy and the environment to the Honorable Daniel P. Moynihan, United States Senator from New York, from 1977 to 1978.

Dr. Cohon is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, the American Water Resources Association, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. He has served on several committees for the National Research Council, chairing the studies on the probabilities of extreme floods and on measuring and improving infrastructure.

In 1969, Dr. Cohon earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He worked as a construction inspector in Philadelphia and as an engineering assistant for the Philadelphia Water Department before attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a master's degree in civil engineering in 1972 and a Ph.D. in civil engineering in 1973.  Dr. Cohon began his teaching career in 1973 at Johns Hopkins University, where he served as assistant, associate, and full professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering and as Assistant and Associate Dean of Engineering and Vice Provost for Research.  In 1992, he became dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and professor of environmental systems analysis at Yale University. Dr. Cohon assumed his duties as president of Carnegie Mellon University in July 1997.

Dr. Cohon resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.