President Wayne Clough has been named to succeed Charles Vest as the new university co-vice chairman of the Council on Competitiveness.

The Council on Competitiveness is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization whose members are corporation chief executives, university professors and labor leaders dedicated to setting an action agenda to drive U.S. economic competitiveness and leadership.

The Council is made up of three co-vice chairs, representing industry, universities and labor. Together, they make up the governing body of the Council on Competitiveness. Vest is stepping down from the position after recently retiring as president of MIT.

Clough, who has been involved with the Council for a number of years, recently helped the Council launch the National Innovation Initiative with co-chair Sam Palmisano, chairman and CEO of IBM. This Council Initiative is focused on keeping the United States at the forefront of innovation throughout the world.

Clough became Tech's tenth President in September of 1994. Previously, he was a member of the faculty at Duke University, Stanford University, Virginia Tech and the University of Washington. He served as head of the department of civil engineering and dean of the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech and as provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Washington.

In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Clough to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, where he currently is a member of the Nanotechnology Task Force and where he previously chaired the Federal Research and Development Panel. Clough received his B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering from Georgia Tech and his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkley.