Dr. David Relman investigates the secrets of the life sciences to help build a safer world.

The Stanford microbiologist and professor of infectious diseases has been named the next co-director of the university’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). An adviser to the federal government on emerging biological threats, Relman believes his new role at CISAC will strengthen its core mission of making the world a safer place.

“There is a strong link between microbiology, infectious diseases and international security,” Relman said. “It is increasingly clear that the destabilizing effects of human population growth and displacement, environmental degradation and climate change are all mediated in part through the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. In addition, rapidly evolving capabilities of individuals in the life sciences around the globe make it increasingly likely that this science will be used to cause harm.”

Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor at Stanford and chief of infectious diseases at the VA Palo Alto Healthcare System, has advised the U.S. government about pathogen diversity, biosecurity and the future of the life sciences landscape. He is a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), chairs the Forum on Microbial Threats at the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. and has participated in a number of studies for the National Academies of Science.

"David Relman is one of the nation’s top scientists exploring the mysteries of infectious disease, a thoughtful adviser to policymakers, and an extraordinary colleague,” said Tino Cuéllar, a Stanford Law School professor and the center’s co-director. “He will make tremendous contributions to CISAC's leadership as we expand our activities on public health and biosecurity while continuing our work on arms control and nuclear security."

Founded nearly three decades ago, CISAC’s mission is to produce cutting-edge research and spread knowledge to build a safer world. Now a part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the center has a tradition of appointing co-directors – one from the social sciences and the other from the natural sciences – to advance the center’s interdisciplinary mission.

Relman will take up the post in January, when Siegfried Hecker’s term concludes after having served as co-director since 2007. Hecker, a nuclear scientist and director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is one of the world’s foremost experts on plutonium, nuclear weapons and nonproliferation. He will remain at CISAC and continue to teach in the department of Management Science and Engineering.

“It has been a personal pleasure to work with Sig,” said Cuéllar. “He has been an enormous asset to CISAC.  He will continue to be a visionary leader on nuclear security and arms control issues throughout the world.”

Relman joined Paul Keim, acting chair of the NSABB, to address a CISAC seminar in March about their work in advising the government on the potential dangers of laboratory-engineered H5N1 avian influenza.

The advisory board had been asked to review two manuscripts that described the deliberate modification of the H5N1 avian influenza virus so as to be transmissible for the first time from mammal to mammal via a respiratory route. This provoked a debate in the scientific community about the risks of such work and whether the details of these experiments should be published – details that would enable anyone skilled in the art of virology and molecular biology to recreate these highly virulent and transmissible viruses. Some argued that the research could end up in the wrong hands. The board eventually recommended in a split decision that this research should be published.

“Life scientists need to be involved in discussions about the oversight of risky science and the responsible conduct of science, so that the potential benefits can be realized while the risks are minimized,” Relman said.

Relman will continue to run his research lab at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, where his focus is on the beneficial communities of microbes in the human body. He is president-elect of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a member of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science. He received his S.B. in biology from MIT in 1977 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1982. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“The appointment of a life scientist who focuses on infectious diseases and biosecurity is an innovative step for our work in international security and cooperation,” said Gerhard Casper, president emeritus of Stanford University and director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Relman tells a story that illustrates his passion for scientific discovery. On a routine visit to his dentist about 15 years ago, he brought along his own test tube. He asked the dentist to give him some plaque that he had scraped off Relman’s teeth. He wanted to study his own bacteria.

“As a clinician, I can tell you my colleagues were not looking for new microbes to worry about,” Relman said. “Some of them believed there might well be some really weird new microbes in soil or in the ocean, but that the human microbial ecosystem was something that we understood quite well. Of course – that was wrong.”

Using DNA sequencing technology, he has since discovered hundreds of new bacteria in the human body.

“Our ability to predict the next important technical or conceptual advance in the life sciences is miserable, as is our ability to anticipate how these advances will be used,” Relman said. “But we can at least hope to engage the scientific community and the general public in discussions about our goals and our understanding of risks – and how best to mitigate them.”

The horror of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has become an inescapable part of childhood in Japan. For Toshihiro Higuchi – a CISAC fellow who this last academic year focused on the political risks and fallout of nuclear weapons – it started with comic books and pencil sales for victims of the American bombs.

“For me, like every kid in Japan, the discourse about Hiroshima and Nagasaki was always familiar – from reading graphic books about the hell-like aftermath to joining a donation drive at school for victim relief,” said Higuchi, a historian and postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. “I remember that I was fascinated by the sheer power of nuclear weapons, and how that power overshadows everything else about war and conflict.”

That fascination with the political and social fallout of nuclear weapons and the complexities of nuclear energy is what drives the six nuclear fellows at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. The fellows – funded by grants from the Stanton Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation – spend their time at Stanford conducting research to build public engagement and shape government policy.

“I have great respect for scientists who can apply their knowledge not just to advance their field, but to use their skills to more directly improve policy,” said Robert Forrest, a physicist examining the role of nuclear reactors driven by particle accelerators. “In some small way, I hope to eventually be one of them. Nuclear issues present not only a fascinating and profound set of problems, but I feel a sort of responsibility toward them as a physicist.”

Seminars, mentorships with Stanford scholars and some of the world’s thought-leaders on nuclear science and policy, as well as annual visits to national laboratories, military bases and security conferences enhance the decades-old CISAC nuclear fellowship program.

“I got properly interested in nuclear weapons on a CISAC trip to the Nevada Test Site,” said John Downer, a Stanton postdoctoral fellow who focuses on the risks of nuclear power. “It’s one thing to read about atomic bombs; it’s another to stand on the edge of a giant crater in the desert.”

 

 

 

Lynn Eden, CISAC’s associate director for research, recently led the center’s postdoctoral fellows to the two-day Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium in La Vista, Neb., in which top military brass, academics and policymakers gathered to discuss nuclear deterrence in the emerging international security environment.

“Panelists had very different ideas about the role of nuclear weapons now and in the future,” said Eden, author of the groundbreaking book, Whole World on Fire, which explores how the U.S. government has underestimated the potential damage of nuclear detonations. “I have to say, the Shultz, Perry, Kissinger, Nunn vision of a world without nuclear weapons was not at the top of the agenda.”

Eden was referring to the watershed editorial in the Wall Street Journal co-authored by the four Cold War veterans, who are now advocating for a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. The heft of their credentials and the passion behind their argument enabled President Barack Obama to call for the same, and be honored with a Nobel.

Eden said many of Strategic Command’s responsibilities regarding nuclear war planning have not changed under the Obama administration, but the thinking of their top officers has. U.S. Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, the commander of Strategic Command, met privately with the CISAC fellows. “None of our questions surprised him, and his answers were extremely thoughtful,” she said. 

The March 11, 2011, earthquake in Japan and subsequent tsunami and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant gave the fellows rich, real-world lessons about the human and environmental costs of nuclear energy gone wrong. The worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl meltdown of 1986 galvanized Stanford scholars across the campus to study the cause and effects of the Japanese tragedy.  

“As someone who is interested in technological risk, I think there is no technological sphere where the stakes are higher and the knowledge more political than in nuclear power – except maybe in nuclear weapons,” Downer said. “The way formal reports and journalistic accounts construe nuclear disasters and radioactive fallout is often terrifyingly misleading. I think I can contribute something by helping restructure debates about nuclear risks.”

In keeping with CISAC’s mission, the fellows are encouraged to engage in pubic debate by drawing out the policy relevance of an issue. They publish in scholarly journals and write academic papers, as well as blog and submit op-eds and editorials to online sites.  Forrest, for example, had a commentary on Huffington Post that urged Congress to maintain federal funding for scientific research and development.

Benoît Pelopidas, a postdoctoral nuclear fellow from France, ran a Friday evening film series this last academic year, highlighting such traditional films as the Kurosawa classic “I Live in Fear” – about a Japanese man whose fear of another nuclear bomb drives him to insanity – to the recent South African science fiction thrilled, “District 9,” which explores strands of xenophobia and social segregation behind national security.

“At Stanford, I found a real interdisciplinary community interested in nuclear issues and unexpected access to policymakers,” Pelopidas said, including former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and Ambassador James Goodby, senior fellows at CISAC’s neighboring Hoover Institution who called on him to write a paper about the future of nuclear deterrence. “This helped me appreciate the value of interdisciplinary research in the nuclear discourse – to create opportunities for change.”

What’s next for the six fellows:

• Edward Blandford: University of New Mexico, assistant professor of nuclear engineering in the Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering
• Alexandre Debs: Yale University, assistant professor of political science
• John Downer: University of Bristol, U.K., assistant professor of risk and resilience in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
• Robert Forrest: Continues his research at CISAC into the role of particle accelerators in a nuclear-powered future
• Toshihiro Higuchi: University of Wisconsin-Madison, an ACLS/Mellon Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the Department of the History of Science
• Benoît Pelopidas: University of Bristol, U.K., assistant professor of international relations at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Ed Blandford, a nuclear engineer and Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow, and Toshi Higuchi, a historian and postdoctoral fellow, share the inaugural Scott Sagan Prize. The award is given to the CISAC researcher who best embodies our mission by their dedication to scholarship and their contribution to our unique intellectual community.

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