Troy, N.Y. — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson will co-chair a national “Energy Security, Innovation & Sustainability Initiative” of the Council on Competitiveness. She will be joined by co-chairmen James W. Owens, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Caterpillar Inc., and D. Michael Langford, National President of Utility Workers Union of America, in the initiative designed to enhance U.S. competitiveness and energy security.

“Energy security and sustainability are the key linked global challenges and opportunities of our time,” President Jackson said. “Drawing on the synergy of business, academic, and labor leaders, we will outline a public-private action agenda to meet future energy needs in as an environmentally benign way as possible by accelerating university-based research, driving innovation, and thereby creating new opportunities for U.S. businesses and workers.” 

The Council on Competitiveness will conduct a series of high-level expert dialogues to examine the competitiveness implications of today’s energy challenges and opportunities. Participants, representing a cross-section of leaders from major U.S. corporations, universities and labor unions, will highlight the critical role private sector demand will play in moving the nation forward to a more secure and sustainable energy future.

“We have convened an extraordinary group of leaders and experts, engaged in energy security, innovation, and sustainability from a wide variety of vantage points, to bring focus to this critical challenge,” President Jackson said. “Given the urgency of the challenge, this is a propitious time for the Council on Competitiveness to launch such an initiative.”

The steering committee includes:  Anthony J. Alexander, President and Chief Executive Officer, FirstEnergy Corporation; Dan E. Arvizu, Director, National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Frank Bowman, President, Nuclear Energy Institute; Clarence P. Cazalot, Jr, President and Chief Executive Officer, Marathon Oil Corporation; Steven Chu, Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Mary Sue Coleman, President, University of Michigan; Michael M. Crow, President, Arizona State University; John J. DeGioia, President, Georgetown University; Michael T. Eckhart, President, American Council on Renewable Energy; Peter Halpin, Chief Executive Officer, World Resources Company; Richard Herman, Chancellor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Susan Hockfield, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; John D. Hofmeister, President, Shell Oil Company; Carl F. Kohrt, President and Chief Executive Officer, Battelle Memorial Institute; Douglas J. McCarron, General President, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America; William A. McDonough, Principal and Founder, William McDonough + Partners; John B. Menzer, Vice Chairman and Chief Administrative Officer, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.; Ralph Peterson, President and Chief Executive Officer, CH2M HILL; Ian Read, President, Worldwide Pharmaceutical Operations, Pfizer Inc; John Rollwagen, Executive Chairman, SiCortex; Robert Rosner, Director, Argonne National Laboratory; John W. Rowe, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Exelon Corporation; Kenan Sahin, President and Founder, TIAX LLC; Richard L. Sandor, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chicago Climate Exchange; John Selldorff, President and Chief Executive Officer, Legrand North America; Lou Anna K. Simon, President, Michigan State University; Frederick W. Smith, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, FedEx Corporation; John Elting Treat, Vice Chairman, Alternative Hybrid Locomotive Technologies; James E. Wright, President, Dartmouth College; Daniel H. Yergin, Chairman, Cambridge Energy Research Associates; Charles O. Holliday, Jr., Ex-officio Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, DuPont; G. Wayne Clough,  Ex-officio, President, Georgia Institute of Technology.

The energy initiative is an outgrowth of the Council on Competitiveness’s National Innovation Initiative (NII), which produced the 2005 report Innovate America. Many of the recommendations in the NII report were incorporated in the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science (COMPETES) Act enacted by the Congress on August 2, and signed into law by President Bush today. President Jackson was a principal in the NII, and Rensselaer hosted one of the three regional summits (September 2004) held in conjunction with the development of the report.   

Background on President Jackson

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson is the 18th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Hartford, CT, the oldest technological research university in the U.S.. Described by Time Magazine (2005) as “perhaps the ultimate role model for women in science,” President Jackson has held senior leadership positions in government, industry, research, and academe. Describing her as “a national treasure,” the National Science Board selected Jackson as its 2007 recipient of the Vannevar Bush Award for “a lifetime of achievements in scientific research, education, and senior statesman-like contributions to public policy.”

Since her arrival in 1999, Dr. Jackson has fostered an extraordinary renaissance at Rensselaer. In addition, she is past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2004) and former Chairman of the AAAS Board of Directors (2005), a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the American Philosophical Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and AAAS.  She has advisory roles and involvement in several other prestigious national organizations and academic institutions. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the NYSE Euronext (and is Chairman of the NYSE Regulation Board), the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, and is a director of several major corporations.

She was appointed Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 1995-1999, by U.S. President William J. Clinton. At the NRC, Dr. Jackson reorganized the agency, and completely revamped its regulatory approach, by articulating, and moving strongly to, risk-informed, performance-based regulation. Prior to that, she was a theoretical physicist at the former AT&T Bell Laboratories and a professor of theoretical physics at Rutgers University. Dr. Jackson holds an S.B. in physics and a Ph.D. in theoretical elementary particle physics from M.I.T., and 44 honorary doctoral degrees.

President Jackson has worked successfully to bring national attention to the underinvestment in basic research and to what she has dubbed the “Quiet Crisis” in America — the threat to the United State’s capacity to innovate due to the looming shortage in the nation’s science and technology workforce.  The shortfall results from a record number of retirements on the horizon, and not enough students in the pipeline to replace them because fewer American students are studying science, mathematics, and engineering and fewer students are coming from abroad to study and stay. President Jackson notes that, if the U.S. is to maintain its leadership in science and technology, we must increase the number of people choosing to pursue careers in science and technology, and to do that, we must tap into all of the talent this nation has to offer, including women and minorities — what she calls the “underrepresented majority.” President Jackson has urged a national focus on energy research as a focal point to excite and encourage greater interest in science and engineering careers, noting that “energy security is the space race of this millennium.”