As a member of the panel, Cada will be providing advice to Congress on the environmental effects of hydropower development and the impacts of hydropower on sustainability of anadromous fish populations. Anadromous fish, for example salmon, live in the sea but ascend rivers to reproduce.
Cada, a research staff member with ORNL's Environmental Sciences Division since 1977, specializes in aquatic ecology and fisheries biology. He has contributed to projects involving proposed nuclear power plants, uranium mining operations, cumulative impacts of multiple hydropower development, and clean coal facilities.
He has also served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development on environmental impacts of and site selection methodologies for small-scale hydroelectric development in Peru.
Cada earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska and Colorado State University, respectively. He received his doctorate in zoology from the University of Nebraska in 1977.
He is a member of the American Fisheries Society and Sigma Xi. He is the author of more than 80 publications and a fellow of the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists.
Cada and his wife, Phyllis, and three children live in Farragut.
ORNL, one of DOE's multiprogram national research and development facilities, is managed by Martin Marietta Energy Systems, a Lockheed Martin company, which also manages the Oak Ridge K-25 Site and the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant.