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Staff

Debra S. Knopman

Vice President, RAND Corporation; Director, RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment; Acting Director, Environment, Energy, & Economic Development Program

Debra S. Knopman is Vice President and Director of RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment, one of RAND’s major research divisions, which includes homeland security, critical infrastructure protection, public safety, occupational safety, criminal justice, energy, environment, economic development, transportation, space, and information technology. She is also serving as the Acting Director of the Environment, Energy, & Economic Development program within ISE.

Her own expertise is in hydrology, environmental and natural resources policy, systems analysis, and public administration. She has led projects on the design of a national research fund in Qatar, barriers to transferring Army lands containing unexploded ordnance, and innovative management strategies in public and private organizations.

From 1997 to 2003, she served as a member of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which has oversight of the Yucca Mountain scientific and engineering program, and chaired the Board's Site Characterization Panel. From 1995 to 2000, she served as director of the Center for Innovation and the Environment at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, DC. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the Department of Interior from 1993-1995. Prior to 1993, she worked for the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

She has a B.A. in chemistry from Wellesley College, a Master of Science degree in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She was the 2001 recipient of The Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association's Woodrow Wilson Award for Distinguished Government Service.

See Debra Knopman's RAND Public Policy Experts Guide listing