Annual Conference

Plenary Speakers

The Labs21 2010 Annual Conference began on Tuesday, September 28, with an opening plenary session to welcome all participants to the conference. On Thursday, September 30, a second plenary session announced the Go Beyond Award winners and wrapped up the conference.

Opening Plenary

Master of Ceremonies/I²SL Welcoming Remarks and Announcements

Joe Phillips, AIA, CEO and Project Director, Phillips Collaborative, LLC

Sponsor Welcome

Harvey Dunham, Global Solutions Vice President—Life Sciences and Industrial Buildings, Schneider Electric

EPA Opening Remarks

Craig Hooks, Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resource Management, EPA

DOE Opening Remarks

Will Lintner, Labs21 Project Manager, DOE

Keynote Speakers

Dan Darrach, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Cooperation, U.S. Department of State
Dr. Jonathan Trent, Senior Scientist, NASA Ames Research Center

Closing Plenary: Go Beyond Awards Ceremony and Labs21 Luncheon

Master of Ceremonies/Welcoming Remarks

Beth Shearer, Founding Secretary and Chief Financial Officer, I²SL

I²SL Remarks and Conference Highlights

Phil Wirdzek, President and Executive Director, I²SL

Awards Introduction

Julie Higginbotham, Editor, Laboratory Design Newsletter

Presentation of the 2010 Go Beyond Awards

Julie Higginbotham
Master of Ceremonies

Closing Remarks

Master of Ceremonies

Biographies

Dan Darrach, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Cooperation, U.S. Department of State

Mr. Darrach

With the U.S. Department of State, Mr. Darrach is the office director in the Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science's Office of Science and Technology Cooperation. A senior foreign service officer since 2003, his most recent assignments include coordinator for U.S.-Mexico Border Affairs; American citizen services chief in Frankfurt, Germany; consular section chief in Monterrey, Mexico; and country director for Colombia and Venezuela as an exchange officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also has had assignments in Caracas, Venezuela; Montevideo, Uruguay; Guadalajara, Mexico; St. Johns, Antigua; and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; as well as the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He is an Honors Graduate of the University of Oklahoma and Distinguished Graduate of the Marine War College. He holds five State Department Meritorious Honor Awards and one Superior Honor Award.

Dr. Jonathan Trent, Senior Scientist, NASA Ames Research Center

Dr. Trent

Dr. Jonathan Trent is a senior scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. After receiving his Ph.D. in biological oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Dr. Trent spent six years in Europe at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Germany, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and the University of Paris at Orsay in France. He returned to the United States to work at the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine at Yale Medical School for two years before establishing a biotechnology group at Argonne National Laboratory.

In 1998 he moved to NASA Ames Research Center to be part of NASA's Astrobiology program and in 1999 he established the Protein Nanotechnology Group focused on building nanostructures using biomolecules from extremophiles—organisms adapted to extreme environments. In 2006, Dr. Trent was awarded the prestigious Nano50 award for Innovation in Nanotechnology. In addition to working at NASA, he is an adjunct professor in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz, a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.

In 2007, with support from Google, Dr. Trent assembled a team of scientists and engineers focused on GREEN (Global Research into Energy and the Environment at NASA). The GREEN team is developing a system for producing an inexhaustible, sustainable, carbon-neutral, solar-powered, economically viable feedstock for the oil refineries of the future. Dr. Trent's recent research and inventions are focused on methods for obtaining alternative fuels, processing municipal wastewater, and economically producing freshwater by desalination.

Harvey Dunham, Global Solutions Vice President—Life Sciences and Industrial Buildings, Schneider Electric

Mr. Dunham

Mr. Dunham has spent 28 years with Schneider Electric in Poland, South Africa, the UK, and the U.S. Prior to joining Schneider Electric, Mr. Dunham received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and served in the U.S. Coast Guard. He worked for Schneider Electric U.S. in varying capacities for 16 years before assuming the position of director of the buildings segment for Schneider Electric U.K. for three years. In 2005 he moved to the position of country manager for Schneider Electric South Africa, followed by two years as country manager for Schneider Electric Poland. He has since returned to the U.S. to serve as global solutions vice president—life sciences and industrial buildings out of Schneider Electric's Chicago office. Mr. Dunham has undertaken management development programs at Schneider Electric as well as Harvard and Kellogg's Business Schools.

Craig Hooks, Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management, EPA

Mr. Hooks

Craig Hooks serves as assistant administrator for the Office of Administration and Resources Management (OARM). OARM is responsible for governing the Agency’s resources management including grants and contracts, human resources, and facilities management. Prior to joining OARM he served as the director of the Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds (OWOW) at EPA within the Office of Water. OWOW promotes a watershed approach to manage, protect, and restore the water resources, and aquatic ecosystems of the nation's marine and fresh waters. Mr. Hooks served as chairman of the Mississippi River/ Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force Coordinating Committee, which is responsible for coordinating federal and state interagency efforts to reduce hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Hooks also served as the EPA representative on the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force, which is responsible for preservation and protection of coral reef ecosystems.

Will Lintner, Project Manager, DOE

Mr. Lintner

Mr. Lintner is the Department of Energy's project manager for the Laboratories for the 21st Century Program. He has been the project manager since the inception of Labs21. With EPA's managers, he has guided Labs21 through a period of rapid growth to become an exemplary model of pubic/private sector cooperation and the premier organization dedicated to applying sustainable principles to laboratories.

Mr. Lintner has championed sustainable best practices, primarily energy efficiency, for more than 25 years, first with the Department of the Navy and more recently with DOE. In 2000, he was recognized for his contributions to reducing the DOE's operating costs by more than $100 million per year through investments in energy efficiency retrofit projects. More recently, he has lead initiatives to spur facility managers to adopt best practices in their operations. Through these efforts, sustainable design and recommissioning of buildings have become standard practices, and DOE has more than a dozen buildings that are LEED certified. Mr. Lintner is a Professional Engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is a graduate of George Washington University and George Mason University.

Julie Higginbotham, Editor, Laboratory Design Newsletter

Ms. Higginbotham

Julie Higginbotham has been editor of Laboratory
Design Newsletter, an Advantage Business Media (ABM) publication, since 1997. She is a graduate of Southern Illinois University and has been a business journalist for more than two decades, with a concentration on architecture, engineering, and construction topics. Before joining ABM, Ms. Higginbotham was managing editor of School and College Planning and Management magazine. She is the recipient of multiple awards for journalism, including the prestigious Jesse H. Neal Award, known as the "Pulitzer Prize of the business media."