President Obama's Top Naval Advisor to Speak at Carnegie Mellon

October 20, 2009

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead, the principal naval advisor to President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, will speak at Carnegie Mellon University about "America's Global Navy: In the Middle East and Beyond." Admiral Roughead is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and leads the U.S. Navy's more than 600,000 globally deployed sailors and civilians. During his lecture, Roughead will address the challenges the Navy faces while the U.S. is involved in two Middle East wars and President Obama reassesses his Afghanistan and Pakistan policy.

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Roughead is a 1973 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and became the 29th Chief of Naval Operations in September 2007. During his storied career, he commanded various fleets as a flag officer, including the Cruiser Destroyer Group 2, the George Washington Battle Group and the U.S. Second Fleet/NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic. Ashore, he served as commandant of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Department of the Navy's Chief of Legislative Affairs, and as deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Command. Roughead is one of only two officers to have commanded fleets in the Pacific and Atlantic, commanding the U.S. Pacific Fleet and Joint Task Force 519, as well as commanding the U.S. Fleet Forces.

Admiral Roughead's lecture is part of the Carnegie Mellon International Relations and Politics Program's Speaker Series and is co-sponsored by the university's College of Engineering and Heinz College. For more information, please visit http://www.cmu.edu/uls/october/roughead.html.

When: Noon, Wednesday, Oct. 21.

Where: Hamburg Hall 100, Carnegie Mellon University

Media: You must register to attend; seating is limited. Please RSVP to Shilo Raube at sraube@andrew.cmu.edu or 412-268-6094.

About Carnegie Mellon: Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the fine arts. More than 11,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia and Europe. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University," which aims to build its endowment, support faculty, students and innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with equipment and facility improvements.

SOURCE Carnegie Mellon University