Appendix
Biographies of Committee Members
Stuart L. Knoop (Chair) is co-founder and vice president of Oudens and Knoop Architects PC, of Chevy Chase, Maryland. He has been involved in design for security for 25 years, particularly for the U.S. State Department, Office of Overseas Buildings Operations. He has extensive experience designing security upgrades for more than 60 embassies and consulates worldwide and extensive service with the National Research Council (NRC). Mr. Knoop served on the NRC Committee on Research for the Security of Future U.S. Embassy Buildings, was vice chair of the committee that produced the NRC report Protecting Buildings from Bomb Damage, and was a member of the Committee for Oversight and Assessment of Blast-effects and Related Research. He is also a former member of the NRC Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems. Mr. Knoop is a registered architect, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and a member of the American Society for Industrial Security and the Construction Specifications Institute. He holds a B.Arch. from Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Mellon University).
Alfredo H.S. Ang, NAE, is a research professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Irvine. His areas of expertise are structural and earthquake engineering and risk and reliability analysis. He has extensive experience in applying risk-based decision criteria to structural designs for hazard mitigation and has been recognized for developing practical and effective methods of risk and reliability approaches to engineering safety-and-design structural criteria formulation. Dr. Ang is the recipient of the
following awards from the American Society of Civil Engineers: Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, State-of-the-Art Civil Engineering Award, A.M. Freudenthal Medal Award, Senior Research Award, N.M. Newmark Medal, and the Ernest Howard Award. He is the author of numerous books and papers on risk-based design and earthquake engineering. He holds a B.S. in civil engineering and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in structural engineering.
Niall Kelly is a project architect and associate partner with the firm of Langdon Wilson Architects in Los Angeles, California. He has extensive experience in developing the technical aspects of the designs of the firm’s joint venture partners on complex building projects and is familiar with applying the General Services Administration guidelines for blast-resistant construction. He served as project manager for the Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was the first U.S. courthouse to be designed and built in accordance with the GSA guidelines. Mr. Kelly is a registered architect in the state of California and a member of the American Institute of Architects. He received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Southern California.
Brian Meacham is principal risk consultant and principal fire consultant with Ove Arup and Partners in their Massachusetts office. He has extensive experience in fire protection engineering as well as expertise in fire protection and particularly in the development and application of performance-based codes for life safety. Dr. Meacham has served as a consultant to private and institutional clients worldwide and directed research and technical activities at the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. He is a registered engineer in Connecticut and a chartered engineer of the Institution of Fire Engineers in the United Kingdom. He is a member of numerous technical societies, including the American Society of Safety Engineers, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, the Institution of Fire Engineers, and the National Fire Protection Association. He holds a B.S. in electrical engineering and an M.S. in fire protection engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in risk and public policy from Clark University.
Randall Nason is a corporate vice president and manager of the Security Consulting Group at C.H. Guernsey & Company in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. An expert in physical security systems, he has more than 20 years of domestic and international experience in strategic planning, project management, facility vulnerability analysis, and the design of facility security systems, including intrusion detection, closed-circuit television, and electron entry control. Prior to joining C.H. Guernsey & Company, he was a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where he
was responsible for investigating and resolving safeguards and security issues at nuclear facilities of the U.S. Department of Energy. Mr. Nason has published widely on topics ranging from security system project development to emerging threats and security system management. He is a registered engineer in Oklahoma and past chair of the Standing Committee on Security Architecture and Engineering of the American Society for Industrial Security. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in nuclear engineering from Kansas State University.
Charles Oswald is a principal engineer with Wilfred Baker Engineering in San Antonio, Texas. He has designed blast-resistant structures to withstand a wide variety of explosive threats, including close-in loading from high explosives and propellants, far-range blast loading, and leakage pressures from external explosions. His extensive experience with the performance of nonstructural materials in a blast environment includes more than 100 shock-tube tests of specialty products for windows that mitigate glass fragment hazards. Dr. Oswald is currently the program manager for a 3-year effort to develop a model to predict injuries to occupants from blast-loaded buildings. He is a registered engineer in the state of Texas and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Concrete Institute. He holds a B.S. degree in civil engineering from Catholic University, an M.S. in civil engineering (structures) from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. in civil engineering (structures) from the University of Texas at Austin.
Thomas Rust is chair of Patton Harris Rust & Associates. He is a registered civil engineer and certified land planner with over 35 years of diversified experience in site planning and development and is well versed in site design and construction issues. Mr. Rust has served as principal-in-charge for numerous site evaluation, development feasibility, and master planning efforts for public and private clients. He is a registered civil engineer in Virginia and has been certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners. He holds a B.S. degree in civil engineering, an M.S. in public works engineering, and a master’s in urban and regional planning. He currently is the mayor of Herndon, Virginia, a position he has held for 19 years.
Kenneth Schoonover is president of KMS Associates, Inc., a codes and standards consultancy for the public and private sectors. He was formerly vice president of the Codes and Standards Department of Building Officials and Code Administrators (BOCA) International, where his responsibilities included the administration of BOCA’s staff support for development of the International Code Council’s (ICC) International Codes and production of commentaries for the International Codes. BOCA’s participation in
the development of standards promulgated by other organizations was also carried out through its Codes and Standards Department, as were the maintenance and updating of those standards that are referenced in the International Codes. An expert in the development and application of building codes, he is a registered engineer in Wisconsin and a member of various professional associations and societies. He holds a B.S. degree in architectural and building construction engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and an M.B.A. from the Keller Graduate School of Management.
Robert Smilowitz is a principal with Weidlinger Associates of New York. He has 24 years of experience in mathematical modeling and dynamic response calculations for ship, satellite, and hardened and conventional structures subjected to shock and vibration loading. His expertise is the blast-resistant design of structures and the analysis of structures’ vulnerability to vehicle-bomb attack. He has participated in the design of numerous federal courthouses and office buildings, embassy structures, airline terminals, and commercial structures. Dr. Smilowitz is a registered engineer in New York and California and has published extensively on issues in blast resistance and seismic design. He holds a B.S.C.E. from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
James C. Snyder is a professor of architecture and urban planning and director of the Studies in Urban Security Group at the University of Michigan. He specializes in architectural and urban security as applied to crime prevention and control, physical and operational security, strategic security planning, and the security of public water systems. His expertise includes planning effective security strategies and designing (or modifying) environments to achieve desired levels of security without adversely affecting human endeavors that occur in the environment. He holds a bachelor of architecture degree from Ohio State University and a master of architecture, a master of city planning, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Leonard C. Zimmerman is a senior vice president at Flack & Kurtz, Inc., in New York. He has over 25 years of experience in engineering, primarily in the commercial and institutional building consulting arena. His expertise is in institutional electrical systems and building systems engineering. His major accomplishments at Flack & Kurtz include the Health Sciences Center at Syracuse University, the World Bank in Washington, D.C., the Federal Office Building at Foley Square in New York, and the Naval Aviation Systems Team Complex at Patuxent River Naval Air Station. Mr.
Zimmerman is a registered engineer in 26 states and a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Association of Energy Engineers, and the National Society of Professional Engineers. He holds a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Louisiana State University.