Charles Ebinger is the Director of the Energy Security Initiative at Brookings. Prior to joining Brookings, he was a Senior Energy Advisor at the International Resources Group. Ebinger was an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service from 1979-2003 and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He also currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Washington Chapter of the international Association of Energy Economists. Dr. Ebinger has 30 years of experience addressing the security, political, economic, environmental, and foreign policy interrelationships surrounding domestic and international energy issues.

Michael O'Hanlon is a Senior Fellow and Director of Research in Foreign Policy at Brookings, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, homeland security and American foreign policy. He is a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a member of the Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board in 2009 and was an informal advisor to General David Petraeus during his 2008-2009 CENTCOM review of Mideast security strategy.

Proposed Research Agenda (joint with Peter Singer)
We propose to split a three-week period in Las Vegas between the two of us. As the following materials on our 21st Century Defense Initiative underscore, we have numerous interests that are well suited to the Las Vegas area for both study and outreach. These range from the issues surrounding the growing use of unmanned systems in war, with Nevada being at the epicenter of the debate with nearby Creech and Nellis Air Force Bases, to nuclear weapons questions, with Nevada also being at the epicenter of many related nuclear programs, to broader domestic issues of homeland security and counterterrorism policy of strong importance to the area.

While there has previously been a primary focus on domestic issues in the BMW program, we should not ignore the interest there in Brookings' broader foreign policy portfolio. For example, during the Opportunity 08 project, coordinated for the institution by one of us, we held our main foreign policy event in Las Vegas, with participants who included Carlos Pascual, Martin Indyk, and Zoe Baird. The late Peter Rodman had appeared earlier that same year in a previous Nevada event, further evidencing the mutual commitment that Brookings and colleagues in Las Vegas have to national security issues, and to collaboration with each other.

At this point, O'Hanlon and Singer have several ongoing interests that lend themselves to research, discussion, and collaboration in the Las Vegas area. O'Hanlon also has considerable interest in matters of technology and defense, having written four Brookings books on the subject in his 15-year career. His present research also focuses on the big question, put squarely back onto the foreign policy agenda by President Obama himself, of whether nuclear weapons can ever be eliminated from the face of the Earth. This grandiose topic relates to a more immediate one, the issue of whether nuclear weapons testing should be permanently ended by the United States as the U.S. Senate likely considers possible ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty next year. The implications for Nevada and surrounding states are hugely significant.

Peter W. Singer is the Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. Singer's research focuses on three core issues: the future of war, current U.S. defense needs and future priorities, and the future of the U.S. defense system. Singer lectures frequently to U.S. military audiences and is the author of several books and articles, including Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. Singer was recently named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2009 by Foreign Policy magazine.

William H. Frey is a Senior Fellow in Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. Frey is an internationally regarded demographer, known for his research on urban populations, migration, immigration, race, aging, political demographics and his expertise on the U.S. Census. Frey's demographic expertise draws from his nearly three decades at the University of Michigan where he is on the faculty of the University's Institute for Social Research and Population Studies Center. He has authored well over 200 publications and several books including Regional and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the US (Russell Sage, 1988, with Alden Speare, Jr.); America By the Numbers: A Fieldguide to the US Population (The New Press, 2001 with Bill Abresch and Jonathan Yeasting), and Social Atlas of the United States (Allyn and Bacon, 2008 with Amy Beth Anspach and John Paul DeWitt). At Michigan, he has directed projects with the National Science Foundation, NICHD Center for Population Research, and several foundations. He has contributed to the 1995 President's National Urban Policy Report, to HUD's State of the Cities 2000 report, and to the Russell Sage Foundation's Census research series. He has been a consultant to the US Census Bureau, and a contributing editor to American Demographics magazine.

Audrey Singer is a Senior Fellow in Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. Her areas of expertise include demography, international migration, immigration policy, and urban and metropolitan change. She has written extensively on U.S. immigration trends, including immigrant integration, undocumented migration, naturalization and citizenship, and the changing racial and ethnic composition of the United States. Prior to joining Brookings, Singer was an associate in the International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Prior to Carnegie, she held a faculty position in the Department of Demography at Georgetown University, and was a demographic analyst at the U.S. Department of Labor. She is the incoming elected chair of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association.

Mauricio Cárdenas is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Latin America Initiative at Brookings. His research focuses on four main areas: the origins and consequences of weak state capacity in Latin America; the socioeconomic of migration in sending countries; policy responses in Latin America to the recent global financial crisis; and industrial policies and commodity dependence in Latin America. Before joining Brookings, Cárdenas served as executive director of Fedesarrollo, an independent policy-oriented research center in Bogotá, Colombia. He also served as Colombia's minister of transportation (1998-1999), director of national planning (1999-2000), and minister of economic development in 1994. Cárdenas was selected by CNN/Time Magazine as one of the "Leaders of the New Millennium" in 1999.

Clifford Gaddy, an economist specializing in Russia, holds a joint appointment as Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies and Global Economy and Development program at Brookings. He is also a founding member of Brookings's Center for Social and Economic Dynamics. Gaddy is writing books on the political economy of Russian oil and gas and on the country's long-term growth prospects. His earlier books include Russia's Virtual Economy and The Siberian Curse.

Rebecca Winthrop, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, is an international expert on education in contexts of armed conflict. Her work focuses on international education, humanitarian assistance, children's wellbeing, forced migration, and state fragility. Prior to joining Brookings in June 2009, Winthrop spent 15 years working in the field of education for displaced and migrant communities, most recently in New York as the head of education for the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian aid NGO. There she was responsible for the organizations' education work in over 20 conflict-affect countries. She has been actively involved in developing global policy for the education in emergencies field, especially around the development of global minimum standards for education in emergencies, the United Nations humanitarian reform process for education, and the evidence base for understanding education's role in fomenting or mitigating conflict.

Tom Loveless is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. Loveless, a former sixth-grade teacher and Harvard public policy professor, is an expert on student achievement, education policy, and reform in K-12 schools. He also is a member of the National Math Advisory Panel.

Darrell M. West is the Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at Brookings. Previously, he was the John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. His specializations include mass media, public opinion, technology policy, electronic government, health IT, broadband, and mobile communications.

Ron Haskins is a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies, a Co-Director of the Center on Children and Families at Brookings and a senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. From February to December of 2002 he was the senior advisor to the president for welfare policy at the White House. His areas of expertise include welfare reform, child care, child support enforcement, family composition and marriage, and child protection. In 1997, Haskins was selected by the National Journal as one of the 100 most influential people in the federal government. In 2000, Haskins received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement; and in 2005 he received the President's Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Human Services from the American Public Human Services Association.

Adele Morris

Adele Morris is a Fellow and Policy Director for Climate and Energy Economics at Brookings. Her expertise and interests include the economics of policies related to climate change, energy, natural resources, and public finance. She joined Brookings in July 2008 from the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of the U.S. Congress, where she spent a year as a Senior Economist covering energy and climate issues. Before the JEC, Adele served nine years with the U.S. Treasury Department as its chief natural resource economist, working on climate, energy, agriculture, and radio spectrum issues. On assignment to the U.S. Department of State in 2000, she was the lead U.S. negotiator on land use and forestry issues in the international climate change treaty process. Prior to joining the Treasury, she served as the Senior Economist for environmental affairs at the President's Council of Economic Advisers during the development of the Kyoto Protocol. She began her career at the Office of Management and Budget, where she conducted regulatory oversight of agriculture and natural resource agencies.

Adele Morris is a Fellow and Policy Director for Climate and Energy Economics at Brookings. Her expertise and interests include the economics of policies related to climate change, energy, natural resources, and public finance. She joined Brookings in July 2008 from the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of the U.S. Congress, where she spent a year as a Senior Economist covering energy and climate issues. Before the JEC, Adele served nine years with the U.S. Treasury Department as its chief natural resource economist, working on climate, energy, agriculture, and radio spectrum issues. On assignment to the U.S. Department of State in 2000, she was the lead U.S. negotiator on land use and forestry issues in the international climate change treaty process. Prior to joining the Treasury, she served as the Senior Economist for environmental affairs at the President's Council of Economic Advisers during the development of the Kyoto Protocol. She began her career at the Office of Management and Budget, where she conducted regulatory oversight of agriculture and natural resource agencies.

Alan Mallach is a nonresident senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program of The Brookings Institution in Washington DC and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. A city planner, writer and consultant on housing, land use, and urban affairs, he has been engaged as practitioner, advocate and scholar in the fields of housing, planning and community development for nearly forty years. During that period, he has made significant contributions in many areas, including the development of affordable and mixed income housing, community development, neighborhood revitalization and community schools. In recent years, he has devoted his attention to developing strategies for the revitalization of distressed older cities and inner-city neighborhoods with particular emphasis on issues of equity and social inclusion, and most recently on the neighborhood and property impacts of the burgeoning foreclosure crisis. From 1990 to 1999 he was Director of the Department of Housing & Development in Trenton, New Jersey, responsible for the city’s housing, redevelopment, and economic development activities. He was responsible for starting over 1,200 housing units, converting the historic John A. Roebling Works into a modern mixed use complex, fostering economic development projects that brought over 1,500 jobs to the city, and implementing an innovative strategy for reclaiming the city’s older industrial sites which led to Trenton’s designation as one of only 16 cities in the nation recognized as Brownfields Showcase Communities by the Federal government.

Before taking that position, he was a planning and real estate consultant, engaged both in affordable housing development and in framing creative land use planning efforts on the local and regional level. He put together the first inclusionary housing development in New Jersey following the landmark Mount Laurel II decision, and has been closely identified with innovative strategies for developing affordable housing and mixed-income communities. Other positions he has held include Executive Director of the Atlantic County Improvement Authority, Research Director of the New Jersey County & Municipal Government Study Commission, and Assistant Dean of Livingston College at Rutgers University. From 1967 to 1971 he held various positions in the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs. He serves the board of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey and on the Advisory Board of the National Vacant Properties Campaign. He has been recognized with the Paul Davidoff Award by the New Jersey Chapter of the American Planning Association, named Citizen of the Year by the New Jersey Society of Architects, and honored with the Environmental Quality Award by the US Environmental Protection Agency. In 2003 he was named a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners in recognition of his lifetime achievements as a leader in the city planning profession. He has taught at Rutgers University, Stockton State College, the Antioch University Graduate Center and the New Jersey School of Architecture. He has published numerous articles on housing, community development and land use, and his books Inclusionary Housing Programs:Policies and Practices (1984) and Bringing Buildings Back: From Abandoned Properties to Community Assets (2006) are both recognized as the standard works on their respective subjects. His most recent book, A Decent Home: Planning, Building and Preserving Affordable Housing was published in 2009 by Planners Press and University of Chicago Press. He is a resident of Roosevelt, New Jersey, and holds a B.A. degree from Yale College.

Katherine Sierra is a senior fellow in Global Economy and Development at Brookings. Ms. Sierra comes to Brookings after more than 30 years as a development professional and senior executive at the World Bank. As vice president for sustainable development, Sierra oversaw the Bank's global environment, infrastructure and agricultural activities and led its climate change strategy including creation of the $6.5 billion Climate Investment Funds and management of $2.5 billion in Carbon Finance funds. These funds leverage the private sector in the deployment of new technologies and support changes in public investment profiles to support green development. In its first year of operation, the Clean Technology Fund, one of the specialized CIF windows, committed over $4 billion of specialized climate finance, leveraging another $36 billion in market based private/ public investment financing. The funds are supporting investments in wind, concentrated solar, smart grids, green urban transit and energy efficiency. Other CIF funds are preparing forest nations to take advantage of anticipated performance payments schemes for reduction in deforestation; supporting country actions to build climate resilience; and bringing renewal energy solutions at scale to the poorest countries. Sierra broadened the Bank's climate change strategy to tackle adaptation and focus on agriculture, water, eco-system and urban sectors and the impact on the least developed countries. She was the Bank's spokesperson on climate change, and represented it at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change high level meetings and at the G-8 and G-20 on climate and environment issues. She is a frequent speaker on the issues surrounding development and climate change. Ms. Sierra has considerable experience in East Asia, including managing the urban and environment program for China, and in Latin America, focusing in particular on infrastructure. She has Bachelor of Arts degrees in anthropology and Hispanic civilization from the University of California at Santa Barbara (1976); a master's degree in city and regional planning from Harvard's Graduate School of Design (1978), and graduated from the Harvard Business School's General Managers Program in 1998.