Cutler Cleveland Speaks on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster

Pardee Center Faculty Fellow Cutler Cleveland, Professor in Boston University’s Department of Geography and Environment, moderated a panel discussion during a special symposium on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster at the annual conference of the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) in Washington, D.C. on January 19.

Titled “Root Causes of Incidents and Responses,” the panel featured Marcia McNutt, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey; Charlie Williams, Chief Scientist of Well Engineering and Production Technology at Shell; Admiral Thad Allen, the former Coast Guard Commandant who served as the National Incident Commander of the BP Oil Spill; and Nancy Leveson, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More than 1,200 people attended the conference.

Prof. Cleveland, editor-in-chief of the online Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE), is the principal investigator for a grant from the National Science Foundation for the development of a special section in the EoE called “The Online Clearinghouse for Education and Networking, Oil Interdisciplinary Learning” or OCEAN OIL. An energy expert, Prof. Cleveland has been closely monitoring and writing about the developments in the Deepwater Horizon Spill for the EoE.