Personality Spotlight: Christina Romer

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Christina Romer, one of the foremost U.S. experts on the causes of the Great Depression, could need that kind of expertise in her new White House job.

Romer, 49, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, was named by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to head his Council of Economic Advisers.

She is the co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is a member of the its Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is the body that officially determines if the U.S. economy is in a recession.

Romer joined the UC-Berkeley faculty in 1988, was promoted to full professor in 1993 and is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.

Her husband, David Romer, is also a UC-Berkeley economics professor.

Harvard University's economics department voted to offer Christina Romer a faculty position this year, while her husband was set to take a job at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. But the offer to Christina Romer was vetoed by Harvard President Drew Faust in a widely criticized move, The Boston Globe reported.