Daniel Fallon retired from Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he supervised grant making as Chair of the Education Division. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. Professor Fallon also held earlier appointments as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado at Denver, and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and of Harpur College at Binghamton University. He has published widely on learning and motivation, on academic public policy, and on comparative higher education. He is the author of a prize-winning book, The German University: A Heroic Ideal in Conflict with the Modern World (1980). Professor Fallon serves the German government as adviser to its excellence initiative for higher education, and is a member of the Stiftungsrat of the Stiftungsuniversität Hildesheim and a member of the Hochschulrat of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Ulrike Albrecht, Ph.D. Vice-Chair
Ulrike Albrecht has been Head of the Strategy and External Relations Department at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany, since July 2001. In this capacity she is responsible for special programs, public relations, promotion, and relations with the Advisory Board for the Transatlantic Science and Humanities Program. From 1997 to 2001, Dr. Albrecht was head of the Department for Strategic Planning and Research at the University of Heidelberg. Prior to that, she served first as director of the public relations office and then as executive director of the “Conference of the German Academies of Science and Humanities” in Mainz. Dr. Albrecht holds graduate degrees in History and English and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Göttingen, where she also worked as an assistant professor at the Institute of Economic and Social History.
A. Stephen Dahms, Ph.D. Treasurer
Stephen Dahms is currently the Vice President of Academia, Industry & Gov. Relations at Southern California Biomedical Council (SoCalBio). From 2005 to 2009, Stephen Dahms served as President and CEO of the Alfred E. Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering and led the creation of the first two of 12-15 new biomedical product commercialization institutes (Mann Institutes for Biomedical Development) at elite US universities. Prior to that, as a biochemist-molecular biologist, Dahms was Professor of Chemistry at San Diego State University (1972-2006), founding director of the SDSU Molecular Biology Institute (1974-1992), director of the SDSU Biotechnology Research Program (1992-96), Director of the SDSU Center for Bio/Pharmaceutical and Biodevice Development (1996-2006) and Executive Director of CSUPERB, the biotechnology research and education program in the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system, the nation's largest university system, from 1987-2006. He serves on the boards of directors for a number of biotechnology trade groups and organizations, research foundations, and other organizations representing over fifty percent of the US biotechnology and medical device industries. He is Chair of the Board of Directors of the US Council of Biotechnology Centers/BIO and a member of national and international committees and commissions addressing the facilitation of interdisciplinary research and interfaces within the academic-bio/pharm/med device industry. Dahms is widely published and, between 2001 and 2004, coordinated a dozen symposia. In Febrary 2009 he was appointed to the Advisory Board of the Milan-based Fondazione Cariplo's venture capital arm, TT-Ventures, designed to invest in Italian university technologies and to accelerate their movement to the commercial cycle. He speaks frequently on the topic of venture philanthropy and its engagement in moving university technologies to commercialization and to the benefit of society. He received the Humboldt Research Fellowship in 1979.
Matthias Vorwerk, Ph.D. Secretary
Matthias Vorwerk is Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He specializes in Ancient Philosophy, especially the philosophy of Plato, Plotinus and the Platonic Tradition. After receiving his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Münster in Germany, he worked as a Post-Doc Research Assistant in a project on the History of Platonism in Antiquity at the University of Münster. Subsequently, Matthias Vorwerk received a Feodor-Lynen-Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation to continue his research at Trinity College and University College Dublin, Ireland. In 2005, he was awarded membership in the Academia Platonica Septima. Since he arrived in the US in 2003, Professor Vorwerk has served on the Calder-Fellowship Selection Committee.
Thomas Campbell, Ph.D.
Thomas Campbell is Associate Director for Special Projects & Outreach and Research Associate Professor within the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) at Virginia Tech. He develops and grows interdisciplinary research programs across a broad spectrum of science and technology, including nanotechnology, bio-nanotechnology, water, cancer, national security, printing, and other areas. Professor Campbell joined Virginia Tech in 2008 after three years at ADA Technologies, Inc. in Colorado, where he served as Senior Research Scientist and Nanotechnology Program Manager. Prior to ADA, he was with Saint-Gobain, Inc., a Fortune 100 company, for five years as a Research Scientist. An Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow, he spent one year (1998-1999) as a postdoctoral researcher at the Universität Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany on a project in advanced materials. He has one US patent issued, nine patents pending, numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, and he has given multiple invited presentations worldwide. Professor Campbell has a M.S./Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University.
Christiane Fellbaum, Ph.D.
Christiane Fellbaum is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Computer Science and a Lecturer in the Programs in Linguistics and Translation at Princeton University. After graduating from high school in Germany, she came to the U.S. where she received most of her undergraduate education as well as a Ph.D. from Princeton in Linguistics. In 2001 she was awarded the Wolfgang Paul Prize of the Humboldt Foundation, which allowed her to set up a corpuslinguistics research project at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, where she is a Permanent Fellow. She received the Antonio Zampolli Prize of the European Lexical Resource Association in 2006. Dr. Fellbaum has directed numerous national and international research project with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the European Commission. Her work on the analysis and computational modeling of the lexical and conceptual inventory of diverse languages has taken her to many countries for lecturing and collaboration, including South Africa, Japan, Taiwan and Brazil. She is a co-founder and co-President of the Global WordNet Association and has served on numerous advisory committees and editorial boards.
Joseph S. Francisco, Ph.D.
Joseph S. Francisco completed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin with honors, and he received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Francisco was a Research Fellow at Cambridge University in England, and following that he returned to MIT as a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow. He accepted an appointment as Professor of Chemistry and Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University. In 2006 Francisco was appointed as the William E. Moore Distinguished Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science and Chemistry at Purdue University. Francisco has received a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award. He was a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, which he spent at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award, as well as being appointed a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy. He is currently Professeur Invite at the Universite de Paris-Est, France He is a co-author of the textbook Chemical Kinetics and Dynamics, published by Prentice-Hall. He was President of the American Chemical Society for 2010.
Katrin Amian, Ph.D.
Katrin Amian is Head of Division North America, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania in the Sponsorship and Network Department at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany. In this capacity she is responsible for the management of the Foundation’s sponsorship programs and activities for fellows and awardees from these regions. Dr. Amian resumed her current position in 2008, having joined the Humboldt Foundation a year earlier as Program Director for Strategic Planning in the Department for Strategic Planning and External Relations. Prior to 2007, she worked as assistant professor in the Department of English, American, and Celtic Studies at the University of Bonn. Dr. Amian holds a graduate degree in North American Studies and a Ph.D. in American Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Bonn. She is a fellow of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) and received several visiting fellowships to study and research at the University of Notre Dame, Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States.
Eric Koenig
Eric Koenig is a lawyer in Washington, DC with expertise in litigation, intellectual property law, and nonprofit management. Mr. Koenig worked for Microsoft from 1991-2001 as a senior attorney in the company's European office in Paris, France. His responsibilities included intellectual property, antitrust, litigation, trade, and management of legal and corporate affairs in Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, including Germany, the company's largest European market. In 1998, Mr. Koenig transferred to Washington, DC, where he served as the head of the federal policy team. A magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a Root-Tilden Scholar at New York University School of Law, he was in the first class of German Chancellor Scholars selected by the Humboldt Foundation in 1990. He is the Immediate Past President of the Board of Directors of the Juvenile Law Center and a member of the boards of several other non-profit organizations, including Global Rights and Appleseed. He also has served as a member of the Asia Society's Washington Advisory Committee and the Dean's Strategic Council at the New York University Law School.
Jaan Laane, Ph.D.
Jaan Laane is Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at Texas A&M University, College Station, where he has been since 1968, becoming a full professor in 1976. His research utilizes laser and infrared spectroscopy and focuses on understanding the forces determining molecular structures. He has more than 270 publications and he is editor of three books of which the latest is Frontiers of Molecular Spectroscopy (2008). He has received numerous awards including the E. R. Lippincott Award in molecular spectroscopy in 2005. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and to the Estonian Academy of Sciences. He is editor of the Journal of Molecular Structure. He has served on the board of directors of the Alexander von Humboldt Association of America since 2003 and has been president of the AvHAA for 2007-2008. Dr. Laane has his B.S. degree from the University of Illinois with Highest Distinction, his Ph.D. from M.I.T., and an honorary doctorate from Tartu University in Estonia. His Humboldt Award in 1979-1980 was spent at the Universität Bayreuth. He has served as Faculty Senate Speaker and Associate Dean of Science at Texas A&M and on the board of directors and as treasurer of the Coblentz Society.
Gale A. Mattox, Ph.D.
Gale A. Mattox is Professor Political Science Department, United States Naval Academy, (1981- / Department Chair 2003-2007) and Senior Scholar, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, The Johns Hopkins University where she directs the Foreign and Domestic Policies Program. She adjuncts graduate courses at Georgetown University, BMW School for German and European Studies and Center for Peace and Security. She was awarded the Distinguished Fulbright-Dow Research Chair at the Roosevelt Center, Netherlands, 2009. Professor Mattox served on the Policy Planning Staff, Department of State (1994-1995), as Council on Foreign Relations Fellow, State Department Office of Strategic and Theater Nuclear Policy and as an international affairs analyst, Congressional Research Service. She has been a Bosch Fellow in Germany, NATO Research Fellow, Fulbright Scholar at DGAP in Bonn, Germany, President (1996-2003) of Women in International Security (WIIS) at Georgetown University, and Vice President of the International Studies Association. She was President, Robert Bosch Foundation Alumni Association (1985-1987) and is the incoming President, International Security and Arms Control Section, American Political Science Association. She is widely published on German and European as well as nonproliferation issues.
Dale Medearis, Ph.D.
Dale Medearis is a senior environmental planner for the Northern Virginia Regional Commission. In that capacity, he co-leads the NVRC’s regional climate mitigation and energy programs and manages NVRC’s international environmental partnerships – among the few problem-focused, goal-oriented and geographically-specific transfer of lessons from abroad to the US. He helped co-launch the first formal climate and energy partnership between the 40 largest U.S. and European metropolitan regional councils, co-initiate the Transatlantic Climate Bridge, co-launch the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s “Cities and Climate” Network and co-develop the Transatlantic Urban Climate Dialogue with the Freie Universitaet of Berlin (Germany). Prior to working for NVRC, Medearis spent approximately 20 years at the Office of International Affairs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, as the program manager for western Europe and urban environmental programs. In that capacity, he worked to identify, analyze and apply “green” building, brownfields, smart growth, energy, climate and related urban environmental policies from OECD member countries to the United States. As Program Manager for Western Europe, he coordinated EPA’s science and technology agreements with the EU and Western Europe. Medearis also served as the program manager for the U.S. National Park Service’s Potomac American Heritage River Initiative. He has been the Vice-chair of the OECD Territorial Development Committee and Chairman of the OECD Working Group on Urban Affairs. Medearis has been awarded fellowships to study urban and environmental planning in Europe from the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the European Union, and the American Council on Germany. Medearis has taught courses on environmental policy and planning courses as an adjunct faculty at the University of Redlands, Virginia Tech University and the Johns Hopkins University. Medearis has a Ph.D. in environmental design and planning from Virginia Tech University, an M.S. in Cartographic and Geographic Science from George Mason University, an MGA in Government from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in International Relations from the University of Redlands.
Arnim H. Meyburg, Ph.D.
Arnim H. Meyburg is a Professor of Transportation Engineering and Planning in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, where he has been since 1969, immediately following the completion of his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering at Northwestern University. He did his undergraduate studies at Hamburg University and the Free University of Berlin. Meyburg is the Director of the Transportation Infrastructure Research Consortium (TIRC), a consortium of ten universities and two research labs, since its inception in 1996. At Cornell, he was Director of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 1988 to 1998 and Chairman of the Department of Environmental Engineering from 1980 to 1985. A consultant to various U.S. and foreign governmental and private agencies, Meyburg held visiting professorships in the United States, Germany, and Brazil. Major awards include a Humboldt-Foundation Fellowship (1978/79), Humboldt Research Award (1984); a Fulbright Senior Lecturing Award for Brazil, 1984; Professor-of-the-Year, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (1984, 1994, 1997.); Daniel M. Lazar ’29 Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Engineering (1999 and 2002.) His major research interests are travel demand modeling, travel survey methodologies, freight transportation, urban and regional transportation planning, transportation-communications trade-offs, transportation and the environment. He has served on the board of directors of the Alexander von Humboldt Association of America and has been its vice-president for 2007-2008.
Jeffrey M. Peck, Ph.D.
Jeffrey M. Peck is the Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences and the Vice Provost for Global Strategies at Baruch College, City University of New York. As a scholar, Dr. Peck explored the complex and ambiguous relationship between German and Jewish culture. An educator with wide-ranging academic and administrative experience, Peck has taught at several universities in both the U.S. and Canada and has held the Walter Benjamin Chair in German-Jewish Culture and History at Humboldt University in Berlin, where he was also the director of the Leo Baeck Summer University in Jewish Studies. Dr. Peck was also a Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS). Peck holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley (1979); a master’s degree, also in comparative literature, from the University of Chicago (1974); and a bachelor of arts from Michigan State University (1972) in German, English and history. He is the author of numerous articles on German and Jewish studies and has also written extensively on transnational and global cultural issues. He is particularly interested in the global transfer of knowledge and the internationalization of the university. His books include Being Jewish in the New Germany (Rutgers University Press, 2006) and (with John Borneman) Sojourners. The Return of German Jews and the Question of Identity (Nebraska, 1985).
Cathleen S. Fisher, Ph.D. (Ex-Officio Member) President
Dr. Cathleen S. Fisher has been engaged in transatlantic and German-American relations for over 25 years. She joined American Friends in 2008 as Executive Director. From 2002-2006, she was Deputy Director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), The Johns Hopkins University, where she was centrally involved in management of all operations and programs in support of the Institute’s mission. Before joining AICGS, Fisher served for ten years as a Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, where she focused on nuclear arms control, export controls, and transatlantic security issues. She has been a Fulbright scholar at the University of Bonn (1981-82), and has held fellowships at the Harvard Center for International Affairs, the Free University of Berlin, and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. She chairs the Advisory Council of the German Center for Research and Innovation and served on the American Chemical Society’s International Center Task Force. Fisher has taught at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, in the National Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and in the Department of Political Science at Emory University. She holds a Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, an M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from George Mason University’s School of Public Administration. She has written numerous articles and monographs and has spoken in the United States and Asia on German-American and transatlantic relations, U.S. foreign policy, and the role of nongovernmental organizations in nuclear nonproliferation and arms control.
American Friends of the AvH Foundation | 1012 14th Street NW, Suite 300 | Washington, DC 20005 | Phone: (202) 783-1907
Daniel Fallon retired from Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he supervised grant making as Chair of the Education Division. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. Professor Fallon also held earlier appointments as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado at Denver, and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and of Harpur College at Binghamton University. He has published widely on learning and motivation, on academic public policy, and on comparative higher education. He is the author of a prize-winning book, The German University: A Heroic Ideal in Conflict with the Modern World (1980). Professor Fallon serves the German government as adviser to its excellence initiative for higher education, and is a member of the Stiftungsrat of the Stiftungsuniversität Hildesheim and a member of the Hochschulrat of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Ulrike Albrecht has been Head of the Strategy and External Relations Department at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany, since July 2001. In this capacity she is responsible for special programs, public relations, promotion, and relations with the Advisory Board for the Transatlantic Science and Humanities Program. From 1997 to 2001, Dr. Albrecht was head of the Department for Strategic Planning and Research at the University of Heidelberg. Prior to that, she served first as director of the public relations office and then as executive director of the “Conference of the German Academies of Science and Humanities” in Mainz. Dr. Albrecht holds graduate degrees in History and English and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Göttingen, where she also worked as an assistant professor at the Institute of Economic and Social History.
Stephen Dahms is currently the Vice President of Academia, Industry & Gov. Relations at Southern California Biomedical Council (SoCalBio). From 2005 to 2009, Stephen Dahms served as President and CEO of the Alfred E. Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering and led the creation of the first two of 12-15 new biomedical product commercialization institutes (Mann Institutes for Biomedical Development) at elite US universities. Prior to that, as a biochemist-molecular biologist, Dahms was Professor of Chemistry at San Diego State University (1972-2006), founding director of the SDSU Molecular Biology Institute (1974-1992), director of the SDSU Biotechnology Research Program (1992-96), Director of the SDSU Center for Bio/Pharmaceutical and Biodevice Development (1996-2006) and Executive Director of CSUPERB, the biotechnology research and education program in the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system, the nation's largest university system, from 1987-2006. He serves on the boards of directors for a number of biotechnology trade groups and organizations, research foundations, and other organizations representing over fifty percent of the US biotechnology and medical device industries. He is Chair of the Board of Directors of the US Council of Biotechnology Centers/BIO and a member of national and international committees and commissions addressing the facilitation of interdisciplinary research and interfaces within the academic-bio/pharm/med device industry. Dahms is widely published and, between 2001 and 2004, coordinated a dozen symposia. In Febrary 2009 he was appointed to the Advisory Board of the Milan-based Fondazione Cariplo's venture capital arm, TT-Ventures, designed to invest in Italian university technologies and to accelerate their movement to the commercial cycle. He speaks frequently on the topic of venture philanthropy and its engagement in moving university technologies to commercialization and to the benefit of society. He received the Humboldt Research Fellowship in 1979.
Matthias Vorwerk is Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He specializes in Ancient Philosophy, especially the philosophy of Plato, Plotinus and the Platonic Tradition. After receiving his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Münster in Germany, he worked as a Post-Doc Research Assistant in a project on the History of Platonism in Antiquity at the University of Münster. Subsequently, Matthias Vorwerk received a Feodor-Lynen-Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation to continue his research at Trinity College and University College Dublin, Ireland. In 2005, he was awarded membership in the Academia Platonica Septima. Since he arrived in the US in 2003, Professor Vorwerk has served on the Calder-Fellowship Selection Committee.
Thomas Campbell is Associate Director for Special Projects & Outreach and Research Associate Professor within the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) at Virginia Tech. He develops and grows interdisciplinary research programs across a broad spectrum of science and technology, including nanotechnology, bio-nanotechnology, water, cancer, national security, printing, and other areas. Professor Campbell joined Virginia Tech in 2008 after three years at ADA Technologies, Inc. in Colorado, where he served as Senior Research Scientist and Nanotechnology Program Manager. Prior to ADA, he was with Saint-Gobain, Inc., a Fortune 100 company, for five years as a Research Scientist. An Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow, he spent one year (1998-1999) as a postdoctoral researcher at the Universität Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany on a project in advanced materials. He has one US patent issued, nine patents pending, numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, and he has given multiple invited presentations worldwide. Professor Campbell has a M.S./Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University.
Christiane Fellbaum is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Computer Science and a Lecturer in the Programs in Linguistics and Translation at Princeton University. After graduating from high school in Germany, she came to the U.S. where she received most of her undergraduate education as well as a Ph.D. from Princeton in Linguistics. In 2001 she was awarded the Wolfgang Paul Prize of the Humboldt Foundation, which allowed her to set up a corpuslinguistics research project at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, where she is a Permanent Fellow. She received the Antonio Zampolli Prize of the European Lexical Resource Association in 2006. Dr. Fellbaum has directed numerous national and international research project with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the European Commission. Her work on the analysis and computational modeling of the lexical and conceptual inventory of diverse languages has taken her to many countries for lecturing and collaboration, including South Africa, Japan, Taiwan and Brazil. She is a co-founder and co-President of the Global WordNet Association and has served on numerous advisory committees and editorial boards.
Joseph S. Francisco completed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin with honors, and he received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Francisco was a Research Fellow at Cambridge University in England, and following that he returned to MIT as a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow. He accepted an appointment as Professor of Chemistry and Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University. In 2006 Francisco was appointed as the William E. Moore Distinguished Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science and Chemistry at Purdue University. Francisco has received a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award. He was a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, which he spent at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award, as well as being appointed a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy. He is currently Professeur Invite at the Universite de Paris-Est, France He is a co-author of the textbook Chemical Kinetics and Dynamics, published by Prentice-Hall. He was President of the American Chemical Society for 2010.
Katrin Amian is Head of Division North America, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania in the Sponsorship and Network Department at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany. In this capacity she is responsible for the management of the Foundation’s sponsorship programs and activities for fellows and awardees from these regions. Dr. Amian resumed her current position in 2008, having joined the Humboldt Foundation a year earlier as Program Director for Strategic Planning in the Department for Strategic Planning and External Relations. Prior to 2007, she worked as assistant professor in the Department of English, American, and Celtic Studies at the University of Bonn. Dr. Amian holds a graduate degree in North American Studies and a Ph.D. in American Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Bonn. She is a fellow of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) and received several visiting fellowships to study and research at the University of Notre Dame, Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. 
Eric Koenig is a lawyer in Washington, DC with expertise in litigation, intellectual property law, and nonprofit management. Mr. Koenig worked for Microsoft from 1991-2001 as a senior attorney in the company's European office in Paris, France. His responsibilities included intellectual property, antitrust, litigation, trade, and management of legal and corporate affairs in Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, including Germany, the company's largest European market. In 1998, Mr. Koenig transferred to Washington, DC, where he served as the head of the federal policy team. A magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a Root-Tilden Scholar at New York University School of Law, he was in the first class of German Chancellor Scholars selected by the Humboldt Foundation in 1990. He is the Immediate Past President of the Board of Directors of the Juvenile Law Center and a member of the boards of several other non-profit organizations, including Global Rights and Appleseed. He also has served as a member of the Asia Society's Washington Advisory Committee and the Dean's Strategic Council at the New York University Law School.
Jaan Laane is Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at Texas A&M University, College Station, where he has been since 1968, becoming a full professor in 1976. His research utilizes laser and infrared spectroscopy and focuses on understanding the forces determining molecular structures. He has more than 270 publications and he is editor of three books of which the latest is Frontiers of Molecular Spectroscopy (2008). He has received numerous awards including the E. R. Lippincott Award in molecular spectroscopy in 2005. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and to the Estonian Academy of Sciences. He is editor of the Journal of Molecular Structure. He has served on the board of directors of the Alexander von Humboldt Association of America since 2003 and has been president of the AvHAA for 2007-2008. Dr. Laane has his B.S. degree from the University of Illinois with Highest Distinction, his Ph.D. from M.I.T., and an honorary doctorate from Tartu University in Estonia. His Humboldt Award in 1979-1980 was spent at the Universität Bayreuth. He has served as Faculty Senate Speaker and Associate Dean of Science at Texas A&M and on the board of directors and as treasurer of the Coblentz Society.
Gale A. Mattox is Professor Political Science Department, United States Naval Academy, (1981- / Department Chair 2003-2007) and Senior Scholar, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, The Johns Hopkins University where she directs the Foreign and Domestic Policies Program. She adjuncts graduate courses at Georgetown University, BMW School for German and European Studies and Center for Peace and Security. She was awarded the Distinguished Fulbright-Dow Research Chair at the Roosevelt Center, Netherlands, 2009. Professor Mattox served on the Policy Planning Staff, Department of State (1994-1995), as Council on Foreign Relations Fellow, State Department Office of Strategic and Theater Nuclear Policy and as an international affairs analyst, Congressional Research Service. She has been a Bosch Fellow in Germany, NATO Research Fellow, Fulbright Scholar at DGAP in Bonn, Germany, President (1996-2003) of Women in International Security (WIIS) at Georgetown University, and Vice President of the International Studies Association. She was President, Robert Bosch Foundation Alumni Association (1985-1987) and is the incoming President, International Security and Arms Control Section, American Political Science Association. She is widely published on German and European as well as nonproliferation issues.
Dale Medearis is a senior environmental planner for the Northern Virginia Regional Commission. In that capacity, he co-leads the NVRC’s regional climate mitigation and energy programs and manages NVRC’s international environmental partnerships – among the few problem-focused, goal-oriented and geographically-specific transfer of lessons from abroad to the US. He helped co-launch the first formal climate and energy partnership between the 40 largest U.S. and European metropolitan regional councils, co-initiate the Transatlantic Climate Bridge, co-launch the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s “Cities and Climate” Network and co-develop the Transatlantic Urban Climate Dialogue with the Freie Universitaet of Berlin (Germany). Prior to working for NVRC, Medearis spent approximately 20 years at the Office of International Affairs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, as the program manager for western Europe and urban environmental programs. In that capacity, he worked to identify, analyze and apply “green” building, brownfields, smart growth, energy, climate and related urban environmental policies from OECD member countries to the United States. As Program Manager for Western Europe, he coordinated EPA’s science and technology agreements with the EU and Western Europe. Medearis also served as the program manager for the U.S. National Park Service’s Potomac American Heritage River Initiative. He has been the Vice-chair of the OECD Territorial Development Committee and Chairman of the OECD Working Group on Urban Affairs. Medearis has been awarded fellowships to study urban and environmental planning in Europe from the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the European Union, and the American Council on Germany. Medearis has taught courses on environmental policy and planning courses as an adjunct faculty at the University of Redlands, Virginia Tech University and the Johns Hopkins University. Medearis has a Ph.D. in environmental design and planning from Virginia Tech University, an M.S. in Cartographic and Geographic Science from George Mason University, an MGA in Government from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in International Relations from the University of Redlands.
Arnim H. Meyburg is a Professor of Transportation Engineering and Planning in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, where he has been since 1969, immediately following the completion of his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering at Northwestern University. He did his undergraduate studies at Hamburg University and the Free University of Berlin. Meyburg is the Director of the Transportation Infrastructure Research Consortium (TIRC), a consortium of ten universities and two research labs, since its inception in 1996. At Cornell, he was Director of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 1988 to 1998 and Chairman of the Department of Environmental Engineering from 1980 to 1985. A consultant to various U.S. and foreign governmental and private agencies, Meyburg held visiting professorships in the United States, Germany, and Brazil. Major awards include a Humboldt-Foundation Fellowship (1978/79), Humboldt Research Award (1984); a Fulbright Senior Lecturing Award for Brazil, 1984; Professor-of-the-Year, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (1984, 1994, 1997.); Daniel M. Lazar ’29 Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Engineering (1999 and 2002.) His major research interests are travel demand modeling, travel survey methodologies, freight transportation, urban and regional transportation planning, transportation-communications trade-offs, transportation and the environment. He has served on the board of directors of the Alexander von Humboldt Association of America and has been its vice-president for 2007-2008.
Dr. Cathleen S. Fisher has been engaged in transatlantic and German-American relations for over 25 years. She joined American Friends in 2008 as Executive Director. From 2002-2006, she was Deputy Director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), The Johns Hopkins University, where she was centrally involved in management of all operations and programs in support of the Institute’s mission. Before joining AICGS, Fisher served for ten years as a Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, where she focused on nuclear arms control, export controls, and transatlantic security issues. She has been a Fulbright scholar at the University of Bonn (1981-82), and has held fellowships at the Harvard Center for International Affairs, the Free University of Berlin, and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. She chairs the Advisory Council of the German Center for Research and Innovation and served on the American Chemical Society’s International Center Task Force. Fisher has taught at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, in the National Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and in the Department of Political Science at Emory University. She holds a Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, an M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from George Mason University’s School of Public Administration. She has written numerous articles and monographs and has spoken in the United States and Asia on German-American and transatlantic relations, U.S. foreign policy, and the role of nongovernmental organizations in nuclear nonproliferation and arms control.