Episode Transcript

Kenneth Rosen
Let’s talk about energy… that we are going to face, in my mind, a huge, a significant increase in energy requirements in the coming decade, and it’s right on top of us. And a lot of this is due, and we hear about it every day, to the rapid growth of AI-driven data centers. These are monstrous centers full of gazillions of chips, and they generate large amounts of heat, and that heat requires large amounts of air conditioning, and that means large amounts of power, power that we don’t have. What this is going to mean to our state and to our people, if we do nothing, is a significant increase in cost at the bottom line. We talk about affordability in Connecticut; this is going to become a very important issue, and in fact, it may become a very serious political issue.

Tan Deleon
On behalf of the Academy’s members, welcome to Learning and Living STEMM in Connecticut, the podcast of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. My name is Tanimu Deleon. I’m an elected member of the Academy and serve as an officer on its Council. I invite you to learn more about the Academy by visiting our website at ctcase.org. Today, we’ll discuss the CASE Technical boards, a valuable resource for the state of Connecticut. Established in 1995 and modeled after the National Research Council, the 10 Technical Boards are organized by public policy areas. This structure allows members to focus on technical issues relevant to the state and to those interested in public policy. I’m joined by Dr. Kenneth Rosen, director of the CASE Technical Boards. Ken began his career in gas turbine engines and fuel cells at Pratt & Whitney, then moved to Sikorsky Aircraft, where he held many major engineering and management positions. Our second guest is Anthony Camilleri, co-founder of Camillieri, Cloud, and Kennedy, CASE’s liaison with the state government. Welcome, gentlemen, and thank you for being here and being a part of this podcast. Before we start, I’d like to learn about each of you, so Ken, if you could share a bit about yourself first.

Kenneth Rosen
Well, I’ve had a pretty extensive, some would say, checkered career, and it began as you indicated at Pratt & Whitney, whereas a young, 21-year-old junior engineer, I found myself in East Hartford working on gas turbine engines and on fuel cells. In fact, I did work on the Apollo fuel cell, Tony. And after a couple of years there, my boss came over to me and said, How’d you like to go down to Sikorsky? And I said, helicopters. Wow, that sounds exciting. Well, 40 years later, I was still there, and I rose to be Vice President of Research and Engineering and Vice President of Advanced Programs. So I had a very exciting career. I was the chief engineer of the Black Hawk. I led the teams that developed the S76, the Seahawk, and the Collier S92 helicopter that President Trump is now flying around in, and of course, Comanche, which is perhaps the most advanced helicopter ever designed. Unfortunately, the army decided not to proceed with it, but it was an exciting career, and I continue to be associated with Sikorsky through the years. After my retirement, I ran a very small 200-person company in Vermont called Concept Center EC, a company that was committed to small gas turbine engine design and even rocket turbo pumps. So that was pretty exciting. Following that, I finally decided to try to retire, which didn’t go too well, and I’ve run a consulting business now for over 20 years, and I’m president and founder of a company called General Aero Science Consultants, and we have clients in both government and industry. I’ve consulted for DARPA through the years. For companies like General Electric, Sikorsky, and now I’m spending a fair bit of time on these new electric aircraft and emerging eVTOL aircraft that promise the world of the Jetsons, it may yet come. And I’m excited at age 85 to be working on that sort of thing. So as you see, I’ve had a very expansive career of over 60 years, and I’ve been a member of the National Academy for over 30 years, and CASE, for over 30 years, and I’m a fellow of quite a few societies, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Royal Aeronautical Society, Society of Automotive Engineers. And I’ll just stop right there. So I’m very proud to be in this function at the Academy, and I see an exciting future for the Tech Boards, and I’m really pleased to be the leader.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, thanks, Ken, your extensive background is definitely a great attribute, and we’re grateful that you’re taking the lead here. So Tony, how about you?

Tony Camilliere
Yeah, it’s always difficult to follow Dr. Rosen, but I’m going to give it a try. All kidding aside, I started my career working for an engineering firm, and I thought I was going to be on that path of engineering. I enjoyed that for a few years after I got out of UConn, and one of the functions that the engineering firm had me work on was the design of a convention center in Hartford. And what that also entailed was some of the folks coming up to the state capitol and testifying at public hearings about the project, and I was asked to present from the design side, and I did that. And I got to see how government worked. And I met my future boss there at the State Capitol. He was a state senator, and I was offered a job, and that was the end of my engineering career, but happy to say, it was the beginning of my government career, which I was very fortunate and blessed to have. I spent about six years inside the state legislature here in Connecticut, working as a senior advisor to the State Senate President Pro Tem and the State Senate Majority Leader, and after a period of time, I left and was working with my old boss in a government affairs firm. And after a little bit of that, I decided to start my own firm with two great gentlemen who had been friends of mine, and for the past 20 years, 20 plus, we’ve had the firm of Camilliere, Cloud, and Kennedy. So, you know, I find that my work is always challenged and always exciting. I do mean this sincerely when I say that I get to work with people like Ken that are from a completely different area that I’m from, and I get to to understand their perspective in this case, CASE’s perspective, and working closely with the executive director and with Ken and some of the others on on the board, and on The Council, and it’s just fascinating. And so I have enjoyed this experience, and I can go into a little bit more as we go on.

Tan Deleon
Thank you, Tony. Really, really appreciate having you on, and you are another great, vital asset to CASE. So thank you so much. So with respect to CASE, you know Ken and Tony, if you could please share with our listeners how you work with how you work for CASE. So again, we’ll start with Ken first, and then go to Tony.

Kenneth Rosen
Well, I think you really have to talk about the two. Technical Boards to begin with, and I’m working in that area. And if we were to ask, you know what are the Technical Boards, and why do they matter? You know, in my mind, when an individual becomes a member of CASE, he or she is assigned to one of the CASE committees, one of our CASE boards. And we have quite an option there. If, for example, we were to assign them to the wrong board, we would change that over the coming period. Some of the Technical Boards that we have include agriculture, biomedical research, communications, economic development, education, energy, environment, public health, technology, and transportation. Now each committee is chaired by a chairman, and each committee has a vice chairman, and they serve for two years, staggered terms. And I think it’s important to understand that these Technical Boards, well, they serve as a forum for science and engineering technology-based issues. Should such an issue arise, we’re there as an important resource to respond to inquiries. Basically, we generate guidance in response to these inquiries. So you might say that we, the Technical Boards, are the prime source of CASE expertise, and that the input we provide, I think, is representative of the fact that we have within our membership some of the state and the nation’s leading technology and scientific experts. So I think the CASE Technical Boards are really exciting and very relevant.

Tan Deleon
And, Tony…

Tony Camilliere
I would say this way. You know, I have been representing CASE now for a couple of years, and as Ken said, the Technical Boards are an incredible resource for the state government. So I see my role as liaison for the four CASE for the Academy to both the legislative branch and the executive branch and Tan, I’ll just say that, you know, I’m going to repeat those two branches of government quite a bit today, just because in the legislature, we have 151 members in the House of Representatives and 36 members in the State Senate. Those 187 people are elected, and they are represent a variety of different interests, districts all over the state. Of course, they have expertise. They all come to the legislature with some expertise. Some are scientists. We do have a few, but I see the opportunity for CASE to help educate the legislators, and a lot of what I do in my role as liaison is to educate and advocate on behalf of CASE to make the legislative branch understand that this is a resource for them, and the Technical Boards, with all the different disciplines that Ken just enumerated, are of great help to the legislators when they decide to create public policy, and that’s what they’re there for, right? They get elected in their districts, and their constituents say we’re concerned about a particular issue, it could be COVID. Well, we, at CASE, have those experts, and we can help the key members of the legislature, the co-chairs of committees, and things like that, the staff, to get educated about how to craft a piece of legislation. So that’s been for me, it’s fascinating. And it’s also a very important role to represent CASE up at the legislature. Now there’s also the executive branch, just quickly that’s made up of our constitutional officers, of which there are six, starting with the governor, going all the way to the attorney general, the treasurer, the secretary of state, the lieutenant governor, and the state comptroller. And the governor has the chief executive, has his administration, which are the state agencies, and we, again, CASE, are a resource for those agencies. Again, it could be environmental protection. We have expertise in all of those areas, and we can, again, through the Technical Boards, help provide the executive branch, the administrative branch of government, advice, counsel, innocence, and assistance as they help to carry out the laws that the legislature creates. Okay?

Tan Deleon
Yeah. Thanks, Tony. Thank you for that breakdown, and you know, giving us a bit more insight into our state government, that’s very helpful for our listeners to make the connection here. So, Ken, back to you here. You know, how do you see the rejuvenated Technical Boards playing a proactive, rather than their usual reactive, role in the future?

Kenneth Rosen
Well, in addition to let’s say, responding to requests, passively doing that for information. I see the rejuvenated Technical Boards also pro still doing that, but proactively suggesting studies, which we believe should be important to connect, say to to Connecticut, to both the legislative and the executive branches that Tony just talked about now, you got to remember that we have, we just can’t get back to the same thing, an enormously powerful resource of talent, which, you know, I believe, If properly utilized, can, can really play a great role here and great role in helping Connecticut, as we’ve said before, we basically hope to emulate the role of the National Research Council. Now, many of our listeners and viewers may not know that the National Research Council is an arm of the National Academies. The National Academies consists of the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering (I’m a member of that), and the National Academy of Medicine. Our CASE Academy encompasses all of those within one Academy. These academies, using the National Research Council, provide very important studies for the federal government and its agencies. It’s my hope, and it’s our hope, that we’ll continue to provide that kind of help to the state of Connecticut. For example, in past years, recent years, I’ve, I’ve served on National Research Council committees. One was put together by NASA to study autonomy research directions in civil aviation. That study was viewed by literally 1000s of people and was extremely helpful to NASA in developing its research program. Another example was one that we did for the Army Research Lab to determine whether or not the work that they were doing in Propulsion Research made sense for the future. That’s the kind of thing that I’m hopeful that we can do for the state of Connecticut. I’m not hopeful. I know we can do it, and I’m positive that we’re going to do it.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Ken, that makes perfect sense and is very, very straightforward. So I really appreciate that. Tony, you know, just piggybacking off of what Ken just mentioned with the rejuvenation effort, how does your role complement this rejuvenation effort for the Technical Boards?

Tony Camilliere
Sure, thanks, Tan. I think the role that I see myself in again as a liaison is that it’s my responsibility to make contact with both branches of government. And aware of the Technical Boards, of their expertise, of how they can be helpful, and it’s part of what I do is to work with key legislators, work with committee chairs, work with staff. As a former staff person in the legislature, I can tell you that the staff at our state capitol is terrific. They’re great to work with, and they’re very knowledgeable, and again, with a part-time legislature that we have 187 total in the House and Senate, that’s a lot of people. And so the staff become very important to us. So so it is my focus to make sure to educate them on how, like the way the legislature is set up, with co-chairs of committees of cognizance, we, at CASE, have the Technical Boards that Ken’s talked about here, and the way they’re set up, they fit very nicely with what the legislators have as committees. So those co-chairs, again, I can give an example of public health. The co-chairs of public health are focused on certain issues that they’re going to need help with. And again, I’ll even mention covid, where certainly we, at CASE, have some great experts and have been called on before as resources during the period just four or five years ago. So yeah, the rejuvenation of the Technical Boards is so important, and it’s my role to get that to be known, both at the executive level and at the legislative level. Thanks.

Tan Deleon
Thank you. Thanks, Tony. Appreciate that. So just, you know, alluding to what Ken mentioned earlier as well. So Tony, if you could take this one, Ken mentioned, you know, introducing study topics to the legislative and executive branches. What do you what do you see as the best way to try to do that?

Tony Camilliere
So again, it follows, Tan, I would say that it follows that the Technical Boards are consistent in the legislative government with the committees and in the executive branch of government with the state agencies. So I see it as my responsibility to share with Ken and with our executive director and the council what the issues are. Gage those issues from key legislators, from those committee chairs, as well as from our constitutional officers and from the executive branch. So I will be meeting with the state comptroller, for example, and find out what his concerns are and how we can be of help to his office. I’ll be meeting with the governor’s office to find out an agency’s concern about a certain issue and what we can provide, and Ken talked a little bit about this, maybe, but I’ll just say that we can provide and we offer, at CASE, to the state government different levels of study. So we could start out with a white paper, which is more of a brief document, and see if that’s something that catches their interest. They’ve already got an interest, let’s say in an issue, we give them a white paper. If that white paper is enough, we will stop there. We’ll provide whatever else we need to, but we’ll stop there. If they were looking for more, we’ll call that next level a technical brief, and that would be something that, again, Ken would lead one of the Boards to take that topic and provide maybe a little bit more of a study, a three-month study, let’s say something like that. If they want to do a deeper dive, I’ll be there to get back to Ken and to our director and say it looks like the legislature is going to do a deeper dive on Long COVID, for example. And for that, we’re going to need to make it a longer-term study, maybe 12 to 18 months. Significant research will go into that. Ken will bring in the right folks on that Public Health Technical Board, and we’ll provide that assistance that way, so I see us providing different levels of support and gauging what both branches of government are looking for on specific issues, Tan.

Tan Deleon
Thanks Tony, yeah, that makes perfect sense, and I really appreciate you taking the time to just break it down for us. So Ken, I want to switch over to you here. You know, what are some of the challenges that Connecticut is likely to face in the future, requiring the assistance of the CASE Technical Boards?

Kenneth Rosen
Well, if you just listen to the radio or TV, you can hear some of these things, and what comes to mind. Well, let’s talk about energy that we are going to face, in my mind, a huge, a significant increase in energy requirements in the coming decade, and it’s right on top of us. And a lot of this is due, and we hear about it every day, to the rapid growth of AI-driven data centers. These are monstrous centers full of gazillions of chips, and they generate large amounts of heat, and that heat requires large amounts of air conditioning and and that means large amounts of power. Power that we don’t have. And the numbers vary depending on who you listen to. Some people say we’re going to need 20% more power in the coming decades. Some people say even more than that. In any case, this need is apparent, and it’s upon us, and there’s no need to debate anymore whether or not it’s wind or solar or nuclear or whatever it is. Frankly, in my opinion, we need it all because it’s on top of us. So we’re going to have to keep burning hydrocarbons, but we’re going to have to come up with newer ideas. And what this is going to mean to our state and to our people, if we do nothing, is a significant increase in cost at the bottom line. We talk about affordability in Connecticut; this is going to become a very important issue, and in fact, it may become a very serious political issue. So in response to this point, I’ll give you an example of one of the things we’ve been thinking about. Our Energy Board has been studying these energy challenges and been thinking about ways in which we could provide some studies that may be useful. A couple of examples. We’ve been looking at small modular nuclear reactors. And these are reactors less than 300 megawatts. These are smaller, younger brothers in a sense of these big, monstrous nuclear stations that we’re used to, and they are both gas and liquid cooled. And some of the designs are, in fact, gas cooled to the point where, if we were to lose the coolant, the other elements of the reactor cooling system would not matter. They would not possibly, they could not possibly, go critical. And such reactors are in use today in South Africa. We’ve been looking at EV charging technology. And what does that mean? It means we’ve been looking at unique ideas, for example, public utility buses, school buses, things of this sort that are gravitating to EV vehicles or even fuel cells. The issue is, can we provide those buses, those, let’s say, batteries within those buses, as storage elements that we can eventually feed that stored energy back onto the grid? They would be charged at off-peak load conditions. We’ve been looking at waste heat recovery from existing power plants. How do we take those exhausts and how do we get extra power out of it? How do we run small gas turbines? How would that increase our overall efficiency, and would mean that we would, we would be producing less carbon imprint and into the air. Another example that would do that is hydrogen blending of natural gas. Everyone says natural gas is our next big thing, and in fact, it is the current big thing. But if you introduce oh, 2, 3, 4 percent of hydrogen in to natural gas, you end up significantly reducing the carbon content of the exhaust product. You make fewer oxides of carbon. The hydrogen itself could be produced at off-peak energy by electrolysis. We would then use that hydrogen, as I said, to blend with the natural gas and to decarbonize it. These AI opportunities, these AI situations that are upon us, the question in my mind is, is Connecticut ready? Are we ready for this thing? It’s on top of us. You could say the same thing about the nation. But certainly, Connecticut, we have a very skilled white collar workforce, as well as a very skilled blue-collar force. The White Collar workforce is not used to changes. It’s not used to being replaced by this AI revolution. So there are significant risks to the Connecticut Academy and to jobs. We certainly could study that for the government and assist them. What kind of education and training is needed? Are our people ready? Do we have the right vocational training as well as perhaps more formal post secondary school training? Those are questions that we certainly can address. Another area that we, many of us, feel is on top of us. When you get into Connecticut, if you’ve made a drive, you notice that our highways are kind of a little bit choked. And if you drive in from having driven up the rest of the East Coast. And the question is, what can we do about that? Can we improve our rail?Can we continue to electrify our rail system and expand it? Could we even expand it to the airport? There’s a whole lot of thought there that is being talked about and reviewed by members of our Transportation Technical Board. As I say, autonomy is upon us, but not not only in cars – trucks. Autonomous trucks are coming. And in fact, there are several companies already doing that. And you know, bringing the autonomous trucks down our highways, perhaps picking up a man driver at one of the service facilities. Are we ready for that? Are the safety provisions in place? Is the infrastructure in place to do that? And as I said at the beginning, I personally am involved in these electric aircraft, these eVTOL aircraft, they take off vertically, and the plan right now is to have them flying at the Olympics in Los Angeles and in Miami within two, three years. There’s plans afoot to put them in the New York area. They’re going to require facilities. These facilities are called vertiports. Are we ready for that? What kind of safety provisions that we want in the state of Connecticut to handle that sort of thing? I’m not sure this is all thought out yet. We talked about hydrogen. Well, we’re moving as a nation, we may not realize it, but we’re going to be moving into what I call a hydrogen economy. The hydrogen economy may, in fact, be what powers are our engines. It may not just be lithium batteries. We may be running internal or pressure combustion engines with hydrogen. In fact, my old company, Pratt & Whitney, has already experimented with running aircraft engines on hydrogen. Well, are we ready for that? Do we understand what’s coming? Those are important technical questions that we want to make it clear to the legislature that we’re available as a resource to help them make the policy decisions that are so important if we are not only to survive these revolutions, but to lead and to, you know, put Connecticut in the forefront to make us an exciting, advantageous state to do business in. So yeah, I see, I see a lot of questions coming up in the near future, and questions which our Academy is very well suited to address.

Tan Deleon
Thank you for that, Ken, that was, that was very robust. And, yeah, there’s…

Kenneth Rosen
Hope I wasn’t too robust.

Tan Deleon
No, no, you’ve given us, there’s definitely a lot to think about. And, you know, frankly, I don’t think people are considering as much of the things that you just said. So, so this is food for thought. So definitely appreciate that. Tony, I want to jump back over to you here, you know, just based off of some of the challenges that Ken mentioned, you know, as our liaison for CASE to the state government, you know, the Technical Boards, as we’ve talked about thus far, you know, remain very relevant and are very important. But you know, with the ongoing changes in Hartford, you know, for example, the regular turnover of elected officials and their staff. How do the Technical Boards continue to remain relevant?

Speaker 1
I see that Tan as really my role too, because I am at the state capitol or in state government all year round, and we have, the unfortunate thing sometimes is that we have a part time legislature. What that means is there’s change. Like you said, every two years we’re getting new elected officials coming in, but in my role, I am at the capitol, and I am involved in state government all year round, so any kind of impediment of the legislators being involved in an issue, and then maybe getting a little bit exasperated with that, and moving on to several other things, it’s my role to keep the legislators focused on the issues that they’ve asked us to help them with, or that we feel that we can be of help with, and to keep CASE relevant throughout this. To keep those Technical Boards active and engaged in the government, and again, if there’s an impediment, that’s it’s my job to overcome that impediment by continuing to meet with staff. That does not change as much, right? The staff have stayed for years at certain levels, while the legislators may change or come and go. But so I’m not, you know, I’m not as concerned about that with both branches of government. I’m really, I believe that we have the ability to stay engaged with both branches, and we will remain relevant that way.

Tan Deleon
Okay, yeah, thanks. Thanks, Tony. So you did mention, you know, impede. So I want to try to pull that string a bit. So like, what potential issues do you think could impede beyond, you know, the, as you said, the part-time legislature, is there anything else that you think could impede this rejuvenation effort for CASE? And then I’d like Ken to chime in a bit after

Tony Camilliere
Sure. So Tan, what I’ll say is that part of the reason why I love representing and being the liaison for CASE is that we have such great experts and right what we just heard from Ken about all those issues that we really do need to pay attention to. There are legislators that are in lockstep with what Ken was just saying, whether it’s about transportation, about health, about environment, energy, they get it. The impediment becomes, I see, the politics. And that’s not our role, right? That’s not Ken’s role. At some point, he’s had a tremendous, distinguished career, but if we can get him elected to office, then that’s a different story. But while Ken and our experts are our experts, not in elected office, it’s the politics that the elected officials have to deal with. We can only do so much, so when we go up to the state capitol, when I report back to the executive director of CASE and to Ken, indicating that we made a fabulous impression on a chair, on the governor himself, on staff, about a particular issue. The CASE members could turn around and say to me, well, Tony, why didn’t it pass? Why didn’t that legislation go further? What happened? Did they need something further from CASE? The answer is, really no. The impediment in that process is it could be anything. It could be private industry coming in and saying, now wait a minute, we don’t want these or it could be consumer groups. We don’t want these trucks, as Ken was saying, to be autonomous. Even though maybe some of our experts have studied it, and we feel that that’s a good that’s a good way for the state to move, the legislators are getting pushback from variety of different groups. So that’s not up to CASE. That’s not up to us to get involved in that part of it, that is the politics of our state government. And so that’s, that’s how I would represent that piece.

Tan Deleon
Okay? Ken, real, real quick, anything on this…

Kenneth Rosen
Yeah, I been thinking about that. What could get in the way? Well, first of all, lack of commitment of the board members, if the members themselves are just not going to see their role as one that requires proactive commitment of service, that could be a very difficult problem, and we’re working that. That’s an issue the academy is well aware of… or CASE leadership, if CASE leadership, by the way, right now we have huge support from our leadership. Our support is excellent. But let’s say a future leadership decided, you know, let’s back off. We really shouldn’t be that public. Shouldn’t be trying to make it clear to the state that we’re the people to go to. We should wait to be called upon in a passive way, Or let’s say, our communication with state government through our government representative was poor. Let’s say we happen to have an excellent leader in Tony, but let’s say we didn’t that could become an impediment, a very serious impediment. So Tony is very important in this plan. It cannot succeed without him. And then let’s take the public and in fact, podcasts like this will help. The issue is public realization of what CASE’s, what our potential is as a source for expert information that could become an impediment for us. We really have to continue to work on that. And then, of course, let’s say our studies were inadequate, or people said, you know, after a few studies, you know, these studies are the CASE puts out, you know, they just aren’t up to snuff, and we just don’t think they’re the people to go to. So it’s extremely important that our studies are peer reviewed and that they are not good, that they are excellent. Otherwise, you know, that could become an impediment to, as you say, to to acceptance.

Tan Deleon
No, those are terrific points. And, you know, those are things that we definitely need to keep on our radar. And it’s always good to self, self check, you know, so thanks. Thank you both for those several points that you just made. Ken, I want to switch stay with you for this topic here… You know, as CASE transforms from a mostly honorific organization, as we’ve been discussing, to one more increasingly dedicated to serving, as you just just noted in your in your previous narrative. You know, do you see any changes in the future selection of members?

Kenneth Rosen
Well, frankly, I do. Frankly I do. I think you have to go back and look at the at the current membership content. My numbers may be off a little bit, but as I recall, about two thirds of our membership comes from academia and you know, and quite a lot of it from our great universities – from Yale and from UConn and schools of that, of that stature. And that’s great but many, many people view CASE as simply an honorarium. Okay, you get elected to CASE. It’s a great honor, and that’s it, and you add it to your CV or your resume. Well, I don’t agree with that, and I don’t think that the current leadership of CASE agrees with it. Frankly, you asked the question, so I’ll answer it. I think that future nominees have got to have the experience and most of all, the intent. The intent to provide service to our state, as well as simply accepting an honor to the Academy. And that’s a little different than what we’ve done in the past. And as I understand it, leadership has taken some steps in the nomination of new members to address this. I think we’ve got to continue to select highly qualified nominees. Everybody’s got to be highly qualified. However, I think we’ve got to encourage increased membership from qualified engineers and scientists from industry and government as well as academia, to really succeed with the kind of people that we need to lead these projects. I think we just need to enrich our membership a little bit and perhaps increase the percentage of our membership that comes from industry and government, and I think we must continue to seek highly qualified and experienced nominees from academia that I don’t want to say that we certainly have to do that, but I think we want to Make it clear to them that, hey, if you’re prepared to work and be a member, a part of future CASE studies, well, that’s important. And if you’re not, well, maybe that has to be considered as we go through competitive selection of membership.

Tan Deleon
Okay, yeah. I mean, it’s definitely dovetails and ties with everything that is necessary for this rejuvenation effort. So that makes sense, and I appreciate that.

Kenneth Rosen
Yeah, I think some of the advisory documents that you and the rest of the Leadership Board have produced, and I’ve read, some of those, seem to be moving in this direction. Seem to be encouraging people who have managed major projects to come forth. Perhaps they they haven’t written 500 papers, but in fact, they’ve led projects that have led to millions, and in some cases, billions of dollars of activity for our state through their their technical expertise and their leadership expertise. Yeah, those are the folks we want to we want to get involved with CASE, and I think they’re the folks that are really going to help us succeed in serving our state.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, I appreciate that, Ken, and thank you very much for that, for that response. Tony, I’m going to give you the last nickel here is there. Is there anything else you’d like to add to the last question, or just any of your, your insights, because, I mean, it’s been a real pleasure hearing them today.

Tony Camilliere
Yeah, thank you, Tan, thank you. And I would just say, I don’t, I don’t see CASE the same way. I don’t have a lot of history with CASE. But since I’ve been brought on, and I’ve been impressed with the leadership and Amy and Mike and all of the others, and Ken, of course, and our director, I think that what I see mostly is Dan, that I have a variety of other clients where the issues we pull and tug on one side or the other. CASE is a very unique entity. That, as we’ve said today here a tremendous resource to the state government, and I’m thankful to be a part of this as its liaison to both the legislative and executive branches, and I am committed to making sure that CASE is at the forefront of helping the state address these issues, and we’re not here to debate the issue with the legislators or with the administration. We’re here to provide expertise, experienced counselors and advice, and so I am grateful for this opportunity, and I look forward to continuing to work with CASE and its leadership.

Tan Deleon
Couldn’t have said any better. Thank you Tony for that. So you know, on behalf of CASE, you know, I’d like to thank our guests, Dr. Ken Rosen and Tony Camillieri for joining us today to provide our listeners with insights into the CASE Technical Boards. Gentlemen, this has been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate your time today. So thank you so much.

Kenneth Rosen
Thank you.

Tony Camilliere
Thank you.

Tan Deleon
Listeners. I encourage you to subscribe to this podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or YouTube. Visit the Academy’s website at ctcase.org, to learn more about our guests, access show notes with additional resources, read the episode transcript and sign up for the CASE Bulletin. Thanks again to our guests. It’s been a pleasure to talk with you today.