Inside the Office of Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.): Eric Werwa

Title: Legislative director

Age: 39

Hometown: Coram, N.Y.

Education: Ph.D., materials science and engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

{mosads}Last job: Assistant professor of physics, Otterbein College, Westerville, Ohio

Legislative specialty: Science and technology, energy

Favorite bill or law: 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act (P.L. 108-153), because my boss was the chief Democratic sponsor in the House, and it was the first major bill I worked on for him.

If you could create a new committee or subcommittee, what would it be? Subcommittee on Refrigerator Cleaning, Office of Sanitation and Hygiene, to develop policies for workplaces in which employees don’t seem to realize that their co-workers are not their mom and that they need to clean up after themselves.

Most embarrassing moment on Capitol Hill: Not long after I started working for Congressman Honda as an [American Association for the Advancement of Science] Science and Technology Policy Fellow, we had some time to kill between a hearing in Rayburn and a meeting back in his office in Cannon. He decided this was the perfect time to check out the members’ gym, which he was thinking about joining, and he took me along for a visit. Standing there with my boss in a place I really am not supposed to be, looking at a peg board on which members’ bathing suits are hanging to dry while other members are getting dressed, was pretty embarrassing early in my time here.

Interests outside of work: Golf, planning my Sept. 4 wedding, trashy “reality” TV shows, my cat Hippo.

As a college professor, Eric Werwa taught a class called “Energy, Science and Society” designed to help students apply their college science in a real-world setting. The class taught Werwa something, too: He was interested in testing his science and engineering expertise in a different professional setting.

In 2001, Werwa, now Rep. Mike Honda’s (D-Calif.) legislative director, landed a fellowship that brought him to Capitol Hill. He chose to spend the fellowship working in Honda’s office and has been with the congressman ever since.

“I hadn’t been politically active before that at all,” he says. But he was in Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, and after that was inspired to continue working in policy.

{mosads}Werwa has found his background useful in handling Honda’s Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations work and also in working for an office that represents Silicon Valley.

When thinking about the college course he taught that got him interested in coming to Washington, he remembers “know[ing] a lot about the science and a little bit about the policy.” Eventually, he hopes to return to the classroom to teach that same class from a new perspective.

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