Frederick Bernthal, president of Universities Research Associates in Washington, D.C., has been elected to the PP&L Resources, Inc. (NYSE: PPL), board of directors, effective March 1.

Bernthal, a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was elected to the PP&L Resources board Wednesday (2/26). His term will run through April 1999.

A graduate of Valparaiso University with a degree in chemistry, Bernthal also earned a Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. He has served as president of Universities Research Association since 1994. URA is a not-for-profit consortium of 86 major research universities and is the management and operations contractor for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Before accepting the post at URA, Bernthal served four years as deputy director of the National Science Foundation, where he also was acting director for a year. He chaired the Second National Critical Technologies Panel, which issued its report to President Bush in 1992.

Bernthal also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs from 1988 through 1990.

From 1983 through 1988, he served as a member of the NRC. In the wake of the 1987 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine, he led a 12-member interagency U.S. Nuclear Safety Delegation to the Soviet Union, where he negotiated and signed the first US-USSR nuclear safety protocol. He subsequently led similar delegations to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria.

Prior to his service in Washington, Bernthal also was a professor of chemistry and physics at Michigan State University for 10 years.

The author of some 50 scientific and policy papers, he is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a member of the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Bernthal also will serve as a director of PP&L Resources' largest subsidiary, Pennsylvania Power & Light Co., the Allentown-based electric utility that serves 1.2 million customers in central and eastern Pennsylvania. PP&L Resources also is the parent company of Power Markets Development Co., an international independent power company; and Spectrum Energy Services, which markets energy-related services and products.

Bernthal will serve on the Nuclear Oversight Committee of the PP&L Co. board and the Audit and Corporate Responsibility Committee of the PP&L Resources board. His appointment brings the total number of PP&L Resources and PP&L Co. board members to 12.