Dr. Steven M. Becker was appointed to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board by President Barack Obama on September 25, 2012.
Dr. Becker is Professor of Community and Environmental Health at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He is a leading international expert on emergency planning, disaster preparedness and response, public health preparedness, and risk communication for radiological, chemical and nuclear incidents as well as other new and emerging health challenges. Dr. Becker has served as principal investigator for several major research studies aimed at improving emergency messages for the general public, first responders, and hospital and healthcare professionals. In addition, he has extensive on-the-ground experience at the sites of accidents, emergencies, and disasters around the world. In 2011, he was a member of a three-person assistance team invited to Japan in response to the earthquake-tsunami disaster and the emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. While on scene, the team carried out a rapid site assessment, interfaced with Japanese disaster professionals, and provided training to more than 1,100 Japanese hospital and healthcare personnel and emergency responders.
Dr. Becker’s research on emergency preparedness, public health, and risk
communication has been recognized with awards from such scientific
organizations as the Health Physics Society and Oak Ridge Associated
Universities. For the last 19 years, he also has been an invited faculty
member for the Harvard School of Public Health training course on radiological
emergency planning.
Dr. Becker holds a B.A. from George Washington University, an M.A. from
Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College. He also was a Dozor
Visiting Scholar at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and a Visiting
Fellow at the Japan Emergency Medicine Foundation and National Hospital Tokyo
Disaster Medical Center. In 2017, Dr. Becker was named a member of the
Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering and Medicine.