Dr. Richard A. Meserve is Senior of Counsel in the Washington, DC, office of Covington & Burling LLP. He is the President Emeritus of the Carnegie Institution for Science and former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Early in his career, after obtaining a PhD in applied physics from Stanford and a JD from Harvard Law School, he served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and as legal counsel to the President’s Science Adviser. Among other activities, he is the former President of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and Chairman of the International Nuclear Safety Group (chartered by the International Atomic Energy Agency). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a former member of its Council. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of its Council and Trust. He is a Fellow the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Meserve is actively involved in the recovery from the Fukushima accident as an executive adviser to the Japanese Nuclear Risk Research Center and as an international adviser to the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority. He has chaired or served as a member of a wide variety of studies undertaken by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.