President Barack Obama has appointed Greenwood native and Lander University graduate Dr. Sue B. Clark to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. The board provides scientific and technical oversight of the U.S. Department of Energy's management and disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
Clark, who graduated from Lander in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, is a regents professor of chemistry at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., where she has been on the faculty since 1996. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she has been Chemistry Department chair and interim dean of the College of Sciences for the university's statewide campuses.
Before joining Washington State, she was a research ecologist at the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. From 1991 to 1996, she was an adjunct assistant professor in the Environmental Systems Engineering Department at Clemson University, and from 1989 to 1992, she held the position of senior scientist in the Interim Waste Technology Division at the Westinghouse Savannah River Laboratory.
Clark has served on several national advisory committees, including the board of directors of the U.S. Council for Chemical Research; the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Research Council; and the board on Radioactive Waste Management of the National Research Council. She was also a member of the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
A member of the American Chemical Society, she has a master's degree and doctorate in inorganic chemistry and radiochemistry from Florida State University.
She and her husband, David, are the parents of a 17-year-old son.
Clark's mother, Eva Brannon, and her brother, Bruce Brannon, are residents of Greenwood.