The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Fuel Cell Technologies Office (FCTO) and the Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) announce that Senator Byron L. Dorgan (ret.) and DOE’s Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), David Friedman, will deliver remarks at the 2016 Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program and Vehicle Technologies Office Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting (AMR) on Monday, June 6. Each year at the AMR, projects funded by FCTO and VTO are reviewed for their technical progress. This year more than 1,800 people will come together and nearly 400 projects will be reviewed by almost 300 expert peer reviewers. The 2016 AMR is being held June 6–10 in Washington, D.C.

Senator Byron L. Dorgan retired from the United States Senate in 2011 after a 30-year career representing the state of North Dakota. He served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992. A strong advocate of energy policy, Senator Dorgan was a senior member of the Appropriations, Commerce, and Energy Committees and also served as Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and the Democratic Policy Committee. As Chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, he worked to fund development of clean energy technologies like wind, solar, biofuels, clean coal, and others.

As the Acting Assistant Secretary, David Friedman leads the roughly $2 billion per year EERE within the DOE. David Friedman has been an influential sustainable transportation and clean energy technologies expert for more than two decades, including service on several committees of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and the President's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Committee. Before joining EERE, Friedman served as both Deputy and Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, where he led the agency's mission to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes. Additionally, Friedman worked 12 years at the Union of Concerned Scientists in several different capacities engaging in research and policy issues regarding conventional fuel economy technology, mass-size-safety interactions, and the energy and environmental impacts of hybrid, battery, and fuel cell electric vehicles.

The plenary will be at 1 p.m., Monday, June 6, at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. To register for the AMR, please visit the 2016 AMR website.