Miriam Heller
National Science Foundation, DC, USA
Miriam Heller is a Programme Director in the Division of Shared CyberInfrastructure (SCI) at the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Systems and Engineering. She focuses on activities that reflect her broad experiences in industrial engineering, operations research, industrial ecology, intelligent infrastructures, and systems engineering. Miriam draws on her prior NSF experiences as co-ordinator of the first competition of Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences' priority area in Human and Social Dynamics and a three year assignment as Programme Director of Infrastructure and Information Systems in the Directorate for Engineering.
Prior to joining NSF, Miriam was at the Université Aix-Marseille III in France as a millennium Fulbright Scholar on leave from the Industrial Engineering faculty at the University of Houston. Her research interests intersect systems engineering methodologies and tools for civil infrastructure and environmental systems. In these areas, she has published over 30 articles, book chapters, and government reports, was an invited speaker at the NAE's 2001 Frontiers of Engineering Symposium on Interdependencies in Civil Infrastructure Information Systems, and contributed to the NAE's monograph, Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism. Miriam's service extends to ASCE's TAC on Sustainability, AWWA's Computer Research and the Utility Communications Committees, AWWARF Project Advisory Committees, several agency studies on wastewater and security, and the National Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee on Natural Disaster Reduction. She is also an active member of the International Society of Industrial Ecology and the American Chemical Society. Miriam's other professional experiences include Digital Equipment Corporation, Citibank Credit Services, ASSI - a French subcontractor for Lyonnaise des Eaux (now Suez), and the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment as a AAAS Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow. She earned her PhD at The Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering.
