On July 9, 2008, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the appointment of Per F. Peterson, Ph.D., PE, to a three-year term on the Committee through June 30, 2011.  Prof. Peterson previously served as a Committee member from September 2, 2004, through October 9, 2007.  Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. reappointed Professor Peterson to a term on the Committee commencing July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2014.  Professor Peterson was subsequently  reappointed by Governor Brown to three-year terms on the DCISC commencing July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2017 and commencing July 1, 2017 through  June 30, 2020.  In February 2021 Governor Newsom reappointed Dr. Peterson to a three-year term commencing July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2023. On December 7, 2023, Governor Newsom announced the reappointment of Dr. Peterson to a three-year term on the Committee commencing July 1, 2023 and expiring June 30, 2026.
    
Per F. Peterson is the Floyd Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.  In February 2020 he was elected to the National Academy of  Engineering. Since July 2017 he has also served as the Chief Nuclear Officer for Kairos Power, a start-up company developing advanced reactor technology.  He previously chaired the Nuclear Engineering department from 2000 to 2005 and from 2009 to 2012 and chaired the Energy and Resources Group at U.C. Berkeley from 1998 to 2000. He received his BS in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1982.  After working at Bechtel on high-level radioactive waste processing from 1982 to 1985, he received a MS degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986 and a Ph.D. in 1988.  He was a JSPS Fellow at the Tokyo Institute of Technology from 1989 to 1990 and a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator from 1990 to 1995.  He is past chairman of the Thermal Hydraulics Division (1996-1997) and a Fellow (2002) of the American Nuclear Society, a recipient of the Fusion Power Associates Excellence in Fusion Engineering Award (1999) and has served as editor for three technical journals.

Prof. Peterson's research in the 1990's contributed to the development of the passive safety systems used in the GE ESBWR and Westinghouse AP-1000 reactor designs. Currently his research group focuses primarily on heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and regulation and licensing for high temperature reactors, principally designs that use liquid fluoride salts as coolants.  He is author of over 110 archival journal articles and over 120 conference publications on these topics.

On January 29, 2010, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu appointed Prof. Peterson as a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future ("BRC"), established by President Obama to provide recommendations for solutions to manage the Nation's spent fuel and high-level waste.  He co-chaired the BRC's Reactor and Fuel Cycle Technology Subcommittee with Senator Pete Domenici.  He has served as a member or chair of numerous advisory committees for the national laboratories and National Research Council. He participated in the development of the Generation IV Roadmap in 2002 as a member of the Evaluation Methodology Group, and has co-chaired its Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection Working Group since 2002.