Dr Charles McCombie was technical director of Nagra, the Swiss national Waste Management Organization. Currently, he is a principal and co-owner of MCM Consulting and president of the Arius Association. He is an author or co-author of approximately 200 published papers or articles and has served on numerous review and advisory bodies, including the Board on Radioactive Waste Management of the U.S. National Research Council and the International Review Committees of NUMO, Japan. In 2011, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Waste Management Symposia. He has a Ph.D. in physics.