VASEM Fall/Winter 2024 Newsletter

Dear friends,

I hope that everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday. I know that I did and feel that the Virginia Academy has a lot for which to be thankful. Our new Executive Director, Nat Draper, has been very active and productive in a very short period and the McGuire Woods Consulting folks continue to be a great asset to our program.

A very successful 2024 Annual Summit was held in Richmond on October 28-29, 2024. The topic, “Bridging the Gap: Charting the Future of Sustainable Energy for Virginia,” was very timely and important. Approximately 175 people were in attendance. The Summit was hosted by Dominion Energy at its Innsbrook facility in Glen Allen, Virginia. Topics included energy demand, generation, regulation, and workforce needs.

The Honorable Glenn Davis, Director of the Virginia Department of Energy, presented the Governor’s energy plan for the Commonwealth and presidents and CEOs of the major electrical energy providers in Virginia such as Ed Baine of Dominion Energy and Aaron Walker of American Electrical Power provided their views of the energy forecast for Virginia. A full report of the summit is under- development.

The Virginia Academy has introduced a new product which it calls White Papers. A White Paper is a short and directed document that is developed over a short period in response to technical questions that it receives from a legislator or legislative staff member. The first White Paper entitled “Technologies for Powering Virginia’s Data Centers” was delivered in August and addresses specific questions on energy technologies such as small modular reactors raised by Delegate David Reid of Loudoun County. I hope that you go to our website and read our first, very interesting White Paper.

We are pleased to announce that we have added two new members to our Board of Directors: Tony Beasley and Chen Ching Liu. Beasley is Director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Liu is American Electric Power (AEP) Professor at Virginia Tech.

The Virginia Academy will be selecting its sixth cohort of COVES Policy Fellows in early January 2025. Requests for applications have been sent and will be due in early December. Two information sessions have been held each with excellent attendance.

We are pleased to have added 20 new individuals to our membership roster in 2024. Three of these new members became members because of their election to one of the National Academies. The other 17 individuals were elected by you because of their outstanding accomplishments and interest in helping Virginia. The new members were recognized at the 2024 Annual Summit.

It is also a pleasure to introduce you to another one of our accomplished members. In this issue, we profile Dr. Don Detmer, a noted physician and medical leader. A practicing general and vascular surgeon for 30 years, his many experiences, combined with a year as the inaugural policy fellow at the Institute of Medicine, led to his appointment in 1984 as vice president for health sciences at the University of Utah and then in 1988 at the University of Virginia. I know that you will enjoy reading about this amazing man.

As you can see, the Virginia Academy and its members and friends are very active. I hope that you find this newsletter informative and enjoyable. Please feel free to contact me if I can be of any assistance.

Sincerely,
James (Jim) H. Aylor
President,
Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine

To mitigate the effects of climate change, the Commonwealth is increasing its reliance on sustainably generated electricity, reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Making this transition, however, while ensuring reliable, affordable access to electricity is a difficult challenge, especially at a time when artificial intelligence is making added demands added pressure on the grid.

This October, the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine dedicated its annual summit to exploring the requisites for a successful energy transition. Entitled Bridging the Gap: Charting the Future of Sustainable Energy in Virginia, the summit included presentations and panels from a broad spectrum of government, industry, and academic experts. More than 250 people came to Dominion Energy’s Innsbrook Technical Center to attend the two-day meeting.

The summit came on the heels of the Virginia Academy’s recently released white paper, Technologies for Powering Virginia’s Data Centers. Written at the request of Del. David Reid of Loudon County, the white paper provides a brief, unbiased scientific and engineering assessment of the applicability of a series of technologies—small modular reactors, advanced conducting materials, and high voltage direct current transmission—being proposed to preserve Loudon County’s place as the preeminent location for data centers in the world.

Hearing Directly from Virginia’s Energy Leaders

The summit began with a video welcome from Sen. Mark Warner, who was instrumental in creating the Virginia Academy in 2013. He used the occasion to reiterate his view that small modular reactors have a role to play in the nation’s energy future and his belief that Virginia is well-positioned to pioneer their introduction. He cited the presence of industry leaders like BWXT and Framatone in the Commonwealth and established programs at Virginia’s colleges and Universities dedicated to training the next generation of nuclear workers.

One highlight of the summit was the keynote address by Glenn Davis, the director of the Virginia Department of Energy. Davis noted that Virginia’s energy demand has grown substantially in recent years. Just 2 percent when the Virginia Clean Economy Act was passed in 2020, it is now estimated at 6 to 7 percent for the foreseeable future. Davis emphasized the challenges of retiring old generation and meeting substantial new demand while sustainable, intermittent generation like wind and solar is being put in place. To ensure that there is always a reliable energy supply available for Virginia’s citizens and businesses, Gov. Glen Youngkin has given his department a mandate to pursue an all-of-the-above approach,.

But Davis asserted that there were exciting new developments on the horizon that support Virginia’s transition to clean energy. They include the recent agreement among Dominion Energy, AWS, and X-Energy to explore the siting of a small modular reactor at Dominion’s North Anna facility, the creation of the Virginia Clean Energy Innovation Bank to fund clean energy projects, and the development of 100-hour battery storage.

Another highlight of the summit was the welcome address from Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy, Virginia. Baine cited his company’s 99.98% availability record, higher than the national average. Because Dominion’s customer base includes some of the most important security installations in the federal government as well as the world’s largest concentrations of data centers, this level of performance, he said, is essential.

At the same time, Baine noted the important strides Dominion has made in transitioning to renewable generation. The company has reduced its reliance on coal to less than 10 percent, added natural gas power plants, and is bringing more than 1,000 MW of clean energy online annually. He noted that Virginia has the largest utility-owned solar portfolio in the country and that its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is projected to open on time and on budget.

Providing Expert Perspectives

One of the strengths of the Virginia Academy’s annual summits is the quality of experts that serve on summit panels. This year, for example, we organized a panel that gathered leaders of Virginia’s utilities to their thoughts on the switch to clean energy, another that included representatives from the regional grid as well as the data center industry to discuss the impact of data centers on energy and infrastructure needs, and a third that brought together professors from universities around the Commonwealth who described their efforts to develop training programs for young energy professionals,

This year’s successful summit highlights our mission of focusing Virginia’s foremost scientists, engineers, and healthcare professionals on the challenges facing the Commonwealth. In all our activities—in our white papers and studies, our COVES Policy Fellowship program, and our biannual strategic assessments of emerging challenges—we are determined to continue providing nonpartisan, objective technical guidance to Virginia’s decision-makers on the most difficult, challenging issues of the day.

In July 2024, Del. David A. Reid of Loudoun County asked the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (VASEM) to provide a “brief, unbiased, nonvested-interest scientific and engineering assessment” of the technologies being proposed to sustain Loudoun County’s leadership as the global data center hub.

VASEM’s commitment to a nonpartisan, objective approach ensures that this white paper delivers clear, unbiased insights into the energy challenges and opportunities for the region. Our experts applied rigorous scientific analysis, free from political or corporate influence, to assess emerging technologies that could meet the immense energy demands of the data centers in Loudoun County—home to over 230 facilities.

As the largest data center market globally, Northern Virginia is at the forefront of tech innovation, with artificial intelligence and next-gen computing requiring sustainable, reliable energy sources. VASEM’s report outlines solutions that balance technological advancement with the need for responsible energy use, providing decision-makers with the scientific knowledge to make informed policy choices for the future of Virginia’s digital infrastructure.

Read the report HERE: https://vasem.org/publications/

The Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (VASEM) is proud to announce the induction of its newest members for 2024. These distinguished individuals have made significant contributions to their respective fields, ranging from engineering and veterinary medicine to women’s health and computer science. Their expertise and dedication to advancing science, engineering and medicine in the Commonwealth of Virginia are exemplary, and we are honored to welcome them to VASEM.

New VASEM Members – 2024

• Dr. Peggy Agouris Provost College of William & Mary
• Dr. Kathleen Alexander Wildlife Conservation; Systems Biology Virginia Tech
• Dr. Kenneth Ball Mechanical Engineering; Computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer George Mason University
• Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Steven Boutelle Internet Protocol (IP), U.S. Army
• Dr. Tom Dingus Transportation and Human Factors Engineering Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, Virginia Tech
• Dr. M. Daniel Givens Veterinary Medicine Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Virginia Tech
• Dr. B. Frank Gupton Pharmaceutical Engineering Virginia Commonwealth University
• Dr. James Kinter Climate Dynamics and Atmospheric Science George Mason University
• Dr. Susan Kornstein MD Women’s Health Virginia Commonwealth University
• Dr. Dennis Manos Vice Provost for Research, Graduate, and Professional Studies William & Mary
• Dr. T.M. Murali Computer Science Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech
• Dr. Amy Pruden-Bagchi Environmental Engineering College of Engineering, Virginia Tech
• Dr. Amarda Shehu Computer Science and Bioinformatics George Mason University
• Dr. Joyce T. Shirazi Information and Technology Systems Engineering Hampton University
• Dr. Daniel Sui Geography and Geospatial Information Science Virginia Tech
• Dr. Bevlee Watford Engineering Education College of Engineering, Virginia Tech
• Dr. Aidong Zhang Computer Science and Biomedical Data Science University of Virginia

National Academy Members

In addition, the following inductees were also recently inducted to one of the prestigious National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, further highlighting their exceptional contributions to their fields:

• Vice-Admiral (Ret.) Mike Loose Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Retired), Senior Vice President/I&E Division Manager at Parsons National Academy of Engineering (NAE)
• Dr. Susan Margulies Injury Biomechanics Engineering U.S. National Science Foundation, Assistant Director National Academy of Engineering (NAE) & National Academy of Medicine (NAM)
• Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan Computer Science and Engineering U.S. National Science Foundation, Director National Academy of Engineering (NAE)

This esteemed group of professionals represents a wide range of expertise, knowledge, and innovation, contributing to both national and international advancements in their fields. Their induction into VASEM signifies their outstanding leadership and contributions to the scientific community and the state of Virginia.

We extend our heartfelt congratulations to all the new members and look forward to the invaluable insights and expertise they will bring to the Academy. Their collective efforts will undoubtedly shape the future of science, technology, and medicine in Virginia and beyond.

New Board Member: Chen-Ching Liu

Chen-Ching Liu is the American Electric Power Professor and Director of the Power and Energy Center at Virginia Tech. Previously, he served as Boeing Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at Washington State University (2011–2017) and held faculty roles at the University of Washington, Iowa State University, and University College Dublin. Dr. Liu’s contributions to power engineering have earned him the IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000) and the Power and Energy Society Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award (2004). In 2013, he received a Doctor Honoris Causa from Polytechnic University of Bucharest.

Dr. Liu has held numerous leadership positions within IEEE, including chairing the Power and Energy Society’s Fellow Committee, the Technical Committee on Power System Analysis, Computing, and Economics, and the Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award Committee. He represents the U.S. on CIGRE’s Study Committee for Information Systems and Telecommunication. Dr. Liu is a Fellow of IEEE, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and an active member of VASEM.

New Board Member: Tony Beasley

Tony Beasley is the Director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and Vice President for NRAO at AUI. He holds a B.S. in Physics with First Class Honors (1986) and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics (1991) from the University of Sydney, where his research focused on magnetic field generation and solar-stellar activity in post-main-sequence stars. Dr. Beasley’s scientific interests include non-thermal stellar radio emission, Very Long Baseline Interferometry techniques, radio supernovae, and astrometry of stellar/interstellar masers.

Dr. Beasley’s career has emphasized the design, construction, and management of major research facilities. His roles have included Project Manager for the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) (2000–2004), ALMA Project Manager at the Joint ALMA Observatory in Chile (2004–2008), and Operations Officer and Project Manager for NEON (2008–2012), a continental-scale observatory providing ecological data for climate change research. Dr. Beasley was inducted into the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine in 2021.

VASEM is hosting the fifth cohort of Commonwealth of Virginia Engineering and Science (COVES) Policy Fellows from May 27 – August 15, 2025. With this fellowship, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in STEM-H fields will serve as science advisors and gain public service and policymaking experience in a variety of potential host offices. The fellowship will begin with an in-person orientation and science policy bootcamp in Richmond, VA on May 21 – 23, 2025, which will feature experts in science policy and communication. The program will conclude with a convocation event to allow the fellows to showcase their work on August 29, 2025.

Applications are open through December 15, 2024. The COVES Selection Committee will review and rank applications and officially announce the 2025 cohort of COVES Fellows on January 15, 2025. This year, there are nine participating universities, including Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Old Dominion University, William & Mary, George Mason University, Norfolk State University, Virginia State University, and new this year, Hampton University. With the support of the universities and generous support from our sponsors Huntington-Ingalls, MITRE, and VIPC, it is our goal to have a cohort of 17-20 fellows. The funds provided by our sponsors will be used to support graduate students from HBCUs in Virginia as well as students from other historically excluded communities from any of the participating universities.

To help with the recruitment of applicants, two information sessions were hosted by the Program Coordinator, which involved a Q&A session with interested applicants and seven 2024 COVES fellows. The information sessions were attended by over 50 interested applicants, which bodes well for a competitive pool of applicants yet again this year! Ongoing work is being done to secure host offices for the 2025 cohort of fellows.

Recently, VASEM leadership met with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC), a key partner in our mission to inform, advocate, and serve the Commonwealth of Virginia in advancing science, engineering, and medicine.

VIPC, with its focus on expanding intellectual property, fostering new business opportunities, and leveraging the expertise of Virginia’s higher education faculty, is interested in understanding how many VASEM members have had the opportunity to launch new companies based on their research in science, engineering, and medicine.

To help provide this valuable insight, we kindly ask that if you have developed intellectual property that has led to new business ventures you complete a brief survey. Your response will help highlight the impact of our members’ work in driving innovation across the state.

SURVEY LINK: https://form.jotform.com/243024014832141

Thank you for your time and participation in this important initiative!

MEMBER PROFILE

There are few people with as broad a perspective on the U.S. healthcare system as Dr. Don Detmer. An inveterate problem-solver, Detmer found that each issue he tackled during the course of his career revealed other more complex issues that needed addressing. “One challenge often leads to others, and as a change agent, I don’t hesitate to take them on,” he said.

The range of these challenges is impressive. A practicing general and vascular surgeon for 30 years, Detmer’s clinical studies while a team physician for the University of Wisconsin Badgers led to more precise procedures for treating chronic compartment and medial tibial stress syndromes. As a resident at Duke, he and Dr. James Davis created the first successful hospital-based ambulatory surgery center in the country. His experience developing a surgical associate track for its physician assistant program gave him the confidence to later establish at Wisconsin the nation’s first administrative medicine master’s program for clinician-executives, where he was president of the medical staff. These experiences, combined with a year as the inaugural policy fellow at the Institute of Medicine, led to his appointment in 1984 as vice president for health sciences at the University of Utah and then in 1988 at the University of Virginia.

While at Virginia, Detmer oversaw the completion of the University’s new hospital and negotiated construction for two additional floors. He worked with Dean Robert Carey to create a Department of Health Evaluation Sciences. He made the new hospital a smoke-free zone, the first initiative of its kind in the state. “It arguably had the most impact on protecting health of anything I did at Virginia because although initially controversial, this move ended up being adopted across the state,” he said.

Getting the Data Right

Early in his career, Detmer began conducting research on the quality and cost of care, and his findings alarmed him. “I became concerned that, because our medical records were so bad, the data we were using to make decisions were not very good,” Detmer said. An early adopter of the personal computer—Detmer bought an IBM PC the year it came out—he became convinced that computer-based records could really make a difference. Throughout his career, he worked to make this a global priority. During his time at Utah, it renamed an existing academic unit to as the first Department of Medical Informatics in the nation. He was named professor in the department and collaborated on the development of its Integrated Academic/Advanced Information System (IAIMS).

In the late 1980s, the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) asked Detmer to chair a groundbreaking study that highlighted the potential of computers to revolutionize medical records and patient care. Published in 1991 as The Computer-based Patient Record, it was instrumental in moving the profession into the age of electronic medical records (EHRs). “There are still significant issues with this innovation, but we couldn’t possibly be dealing with the complexity of American medicine without it,” he said.

Detmer continued to push for advances in the field. During the Clinton administration, he chaired the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, which launched the National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) initiative in 1997. After a five-year tenure at the University of Cambridge where he consulted with England’s and Hong Kong’s EHR and NHII initiatives, he accepted an appointment as president and chief executive officer of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), a post he held until 2009. In this position, he aligned AMIA activities into three interrelated areas: translational bioinformatics, clinical informatics, and public health informatics. During his tenure, a new medical specialty of clinical informatics was created and steps were taken for a multi-disciplinary certification program for all health professionals.

Putting Useful Knowledge to Use

Although now retired, Detmer is still flying around the world, addressing conferences on lessons learned during his four decades transforming medical informatics and remains focused, as he has been during his entire career, on ensuring widespread application of useful knowledge. For example, he led a team to create a webpage on UVA’s population health website—UVA Health Protectors—to celebrate the activities of individuals and organizations within and around the University who go beyond conventional medical care to safeguard and promote individual and community health. With hopes of inspiring much younger innovators, the site focuses on those who protect and preserve health beyond efforts to restore it.

His next focus is to generate and support a corps of citizen-scientists, who can lead us, using the tools of large language systems and information/communications technologies, into a post-managed care era that focuses on protecting health while also utilizing a much smaller, safe, and effective clinical care system.

It is perhaps a tribute to Detmer’s upbringing in rural Kansas that he developed the self-reliance to take on large, seemingly intractable issues. “I’ve been very lucky,” he said, “but having grown up in the tiny town of Lindsborg, Kansas, I am probably more surprised than anyone.”

Dr. Jennifer West Inducted into the National Academy of Medicine

Dr. Bob Phillips received the David Rall Medal by the NAM The medal is given to a member who has demonstrated distinguished leadership as chair of a study committee or other such activity. Dr. Phillips was recognized for co-leading the successful National Academies consensus study committee that produced the 2021 report Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care.

Dr. Antonio Elias added to Schriever Wall of Honor Event recognizes space, missile pioneers in American space and missile development were honored in a ceremony hosted by Space Systems Command in recognition of achievements in astronautics that began as early as the 1950s and continue to resonate in today’s contested space environment.

Dr. Kenneth S. Kendler published in Genomic Psychiatry In an era where mental health awareness is at the forefront of public discourse, a new historical review is shedding light on the often-overlooked French contributions to our understanding of depression. The study examines a seminal 1897 French monograph that helped shape modern concepts of melancholia and depression.

Dr. William A. Petri Jr., MD, PhD and UVA research reveals nervous system’s role in C. difficile infections The portion of our nervous systems responsible for the “fight or flight” response can shape the severity of potentially deadly C. difficile infections, new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine reveals. The findings suggest that doctors may be able to save patients from the infections – a plague for hospitals and nursing homes – by using drugs to quiet the hyperactive nervous system response

Dr. Robert Carey presented with his 40-year membership pin by New Vienna Lions Club

VASEM Members: Share articles and highlights of your work with us by email: info@vasem.org