Major Reid Sawyer, a career military intelligence officer, is an instructor of political science at the United States Military Academy. As an intelligence officer, Major Sawyer served in counternarcotics and special operations assignments. Major Sawyer earned his undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy and holds a master's degree from Columbia University. Major Sawyer has lectured on terrorism to various groups and is currently working on a research project for the Institute of National Security Studies on the efficacy of counterterrorism measures. Major Sawyer is the current director of terrorism studies at West Point.

On November 15, 2005, the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is required by law to submit a recommendation to the parliament on how Canada should manage its spent nuclear reactor fuel. NWMO, which came into existence on November 15, 2002, is undertaking a creative and iterative process engaging the technical, political, and public communities in arriving at their recommendation. As an integral part of the process, NWMO established an assessment team to develop an analytical framework and a systematic method for evaluating and comparing options. Isaacs, one of two non-Canadian members of the team, will describe the ongoing work with emphasis on the multi-attribute utility analysis that was developed to evaluate the options against a range of technical, economic, and social issues.

Tom Isaacs directs the policy and planning activities of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is a member of advisory committees for Oregon State University and Texas A&M University nuclear engineering departments.

Isaacs was a member of the National Research Council committee that produced "One Step at a Time: The Staged Development of Geologic Repositories for High-Level Radioactive Waste," and was a member of the NRC Committee on Building a Long-Term Environmental Quality Research and Development Program in the U.S. Department of Energy.

He was chairman of the Expert Group on Nuclear Education and Training, a 17-nation evaluation sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris. He served on the DOE Science Advisory Committee for Environmental Management. He was a member of the "Blue-Ribbon Panel" on the Future of University Nuclear Engineering Programs and University Research and Training Reactors for the Department of Energy.

Previously, Isaacs was the Executive Director of the advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy and the White House which made recommendations on the need for nuclear regulatory reform in the DOE. He also held several management positions in the High-Level Radioactive Waste Program of the DOE, including Director of Strategic Planning and International Programs, Director of Policy and External Relations, and Deputy Director of the Office of Geologic Repositories. He managed the multi-attribute utility analysis that underpinned the selection of Yucca Mountain as the U.S. repository site.

Isaacs also managed the international technical cooperative program with several European nations and Canada. He was the lead U.S. delegate to the Nuclear Energy Agency's Radioactive Waste Management Committee in Paris and represented the Department with the National Academy of Sciences.

Earlier, Isaacs was Deputy Director of the DOE Office of Safeguards and Security with responsibility for national policy formulation and technical leadership in federal actions to minimize prospects of nuclear proliferation, including establishing the program of technical assistance to the International Atomic Energy Agency for safeguarding nuclear facilities worldwide. He began his career with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission where he helped oversee the design of the reactor core of the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF).

Isaacs graduated with a BS degree in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and was a member of the Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honor Society. He received an MS in engineering and applied physics from Harvard University.

Ambassador Dobbins will review the American and United Nation's experience with nation building over the past sixty years and explore lessons for Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. He will draw upon the just completed RAND History of Nation Building, the first volume of which deals with U.S. led missions from Germany to Iraq. The newly released second volume covers U.N.-led operations beginning with the Belgian Congo in the early 1960's. Dobbins will compare the U.S. and U.N. approaches to nation building, and evaluate their respective success rates.

Ambassador Dobbins directs RAND's International Security and Defense Policy Center. He has held State Department and White House posts including Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Special Assistant to the President for the Western Hemisphere, Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for the Balkans, and Ambassador to the European Community. He has handled a variety of crisis management assignments as the Clinton Administration's special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and the Bush Administration's first special envoy for Afghanistan. He is principal author of the two-volume RAND History of Nation Building.

In the wake of Sept 11, 2001, Dobbins was designated as the Bush Administration's representative to the Afghan opposition. Dobbins helped organize and then represented the U.S. at the Bonn Conference where a new Afghan government was formed. On Dec. 16, 2001, he raised the flag over the newly reopened U.S. Embassy.

Earlier in his State Department career Dobbins served twice as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, as Deputy Chief of Mission in Germany, and as Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe.

Dobbins graduated from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and served 3 years in the Navy. He is married to Toril Kleivdal, and has two sons.

Since Vietnam, the US Army has focused an unprecedented degree of effort on capturing lessons learned in training and on the battlefield and communicating them to other affected units. The Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), established after Operation URGENT FURY, is the prime example of the Army's efforts to institutionalize the process of learning during the Cold War. CALL continues to function and provide lessons learned in the current Global War on Terror, while other grassroots organizations have sprung up within the Army to target the learning needs of specific segments of the force. One such organization is CompanyCommand.com, an online professional forum of Army leaders dedicated to outstanding leadership at the small-unit level. This talk will discuss the evolution of organizational learning in the Army since Vietnam, and examine how organizations like CALL and CompanyCommand complement one other in the pursuit of excellence.

Captain Raymond A. Kimball is a native of Reading, Pennsylvania, and was commissioned through the United States Military Academy in 1995. After completing initial officer and flight training, he was assigned to the 1st Battalion (Attack), 10th Aviation Regiment, at Fort Drum, New York in November 1996. While assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, he served as an aeroscout platoon leader and logistics and support officer. In those positions, he participated in the full range of Army operations, from home station training to counter-drug operations along the Mexican border to peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In May of 2001, after completing further officer training, he reported to the 3rd Infantry Division, where he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 7th U.S. Cavalry. He took command of F Troop, 3-7 Cavalry in July of 2001. The troop consisted of 88 soldiers and $6 million in equipment and was responsible for all aspects of support and maintenance for the squadron's sixteen scout helicopters. In January of 2003, the troop deployed as part of 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, to Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. During combat operations the troop supported 870 flight hours over a period of twenty-one days while moving 700 kilometers through enemy territory without the loss of a single soldier. He gave up command of F Troop in June of 2003 and returned to the United States to begin graduate studies in history at Stanford. In addition to his coursework, he serves as a research assistant to the Preventive Defense Project in CISAC. For the past two years, he has also served as a Topic Lead and advisor to CompanyCommand.com. His next assignment will be as an Associate Professor of History at the United States Military Academy. His awards include the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, and the Humanitarian Service Medal. He is married to the former Mindy Hynds of Vacaville, California; they have one son, Daniel.

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen is a doctoral candidate at Yale University and a CISAC social science fellow. She is currently working on her dissertation, entitled "Between the Storms: An International History of the Second Indochina War, 1968-1973," for which she did multiarchival research in Vietnam, the United States, and Europe. She has two upcoming chapters in volumes on the First and Third Indochina Wars, to be published by the presses at Harvard University and the London School of Economics, respectively. She is a member of the American Historical Association, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Association for Asian Studies, and she serves on the executive committee of the Vietnam Studies Group. She received an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania.