Steven Becker

Dr. Steven M. Becker is professor of community & environmental health in the College of Health Sciences at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He is an internationally recognized expert on public health preparedness, emergency planning, community response, and crisis and emergency risk communication for radiological and nuclear emergencies. Dr. Becker has had extensive field experience at the sites of radiation incidents around the world, including the 1999 nuclear criticality accident in Tokaimura, Japan. He has done Chernobyl disaster follow-up work in Ukraine and Belarus, and was a member of a three-person radiological emergency assistance team invited to Japan in 2011 in response to the earthquake-tsunami disaster and the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident. In 2005, Dr. Becker was elected by his scientific peers to serve on the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, and he was a co-author of NCRP Commentary No. 19, Key Elements of Preparing Emergency Responders for Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism; Report No. 138, Management of Terrorist Events Involving Radioactive Material; and Report No. 166, Population Monitoring and Radionuclide Decorporation Following a Radiological or Nuclear Incident. His work on emergency preparedness and risk communication has been recognized with awards from such scientific organizations as the Health Physics Society and Oak Ridge Associated Universities. In September 2012, Dr. Becker was appointed by President Barack Obama to the United States Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.