Ben Rudolph was an ambitious computer science major planning to remain in Silicon Valley and join one of the many start-ups eager for young Stanford grads. But in his senior year he took a class, “Rethinking Refugee Communities,” which knocked him off his path and got him thinking about how to use that ambition for the greater good.

The class was co-taught by Tino Cuéllar, a Stanford Law School professor and director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Cuéllar led the class while co-director of FSI's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), which had just launched a collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The agency was looking for innovative ideas to support and protect the more than 42 million refugees, internally displaced and stateless people around the world.

When Rudolph graduated in June, he turned down offers in local tech firms and headed to Geneva as an intern for UNHCR’s nascent innovation lab. He joined Stanford alumna and CISAC faithful, Alice Bosley, in the small office with a big mission: to aid refugees by driving innovation using the latest tools of technology. 

“I get to make a difference in the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world: refugees,” said Rudolph, a 23-year-old from Naperville, Ill., who came to Stanford on a gymnastics scholarship. “And I love that I get to meet such a diverse group of people with wildly different opinions about so many things.” 

Rudolph has now joined UNHCR Innovation full time and has traveled to Ecuador to pilot one of his projects and to Thailand for an innovation workshop. On a recent trip to Esmeraldas on the northwestern coast of Ecuador, he tested out an SMS program that would help displaced people get information from the UNHCR and its partner organizations. 

Bosley, the associate operations officer at UNHCR Innovation, first joined the U.N. as an intern speechwriter at the Permanent Mission of East Timor to the United Nations in New York. She was visiting some CISAC colleagues in the spring of 2012 when she learned about the burgeoning collaboration between the center and UNHCR. She volunteered for the project and became an intern with the newly formed UNHCR Innovation team, where she was later offered a full-time position.

Alice Bosley crossing a river near the Dollo Ado UNHCR refugee camp in Ethiopia.

“UNHCR Innovation is my dream job; I am constantly traveling to new and interesting locations to work on projects and I’m able to support some of the most creative and impressive people in the organization,” said Bosley, 25, who graduated in 2011 with a degree in international relations. “It’s challenging and sometimes overwhelming. But I wouldn’t pick anything else to do at this point in my life.” 

Rudolph and Bosley are models of the CISAC mission: to train the next generation of experts who will make the world a safer place. While not entrenched in the policy arena or at the forefront of arms control or Track II diplomacy, they are quietly, doggedly fulfilling the CISAC pledge to improve lives around the world. 

"One of CISAC's greatest strengths over the years has been its record of attracting enormously talented students and fellows from a diverse array of disciplines and giving them a chance to work on problems that affect lives around the world,” said Cuéllar. 

The UNHCR came to Cuéllar in early 2012 asking to collaborate. That initial request has led to an array of projects across campus and around the world. Cuéllar last year co-taught the class, “Rethinking Refugee Communities,” with Leslie Witt of the Palo Alto-based global design firm IDEO. That class in turn led to research trips in Ethiopia and Rwanda with UNHCR and the International Rescue Committee to test out some of the student projects to improve food security, communications, camp design and an SMS platform that Rudolph later tested with the innovation lab. 

“Ben and Alice were attracted to the refugee project because of its focus on improving conditions for forced migrants,” said Cuéllar. “Both of them are brimming with intellectual curiosity, ability, and dedication, so it's no surprise that UNHCR has put them at the center of its innovation work." 

The collaboration now extends far beyond CISAC. Cuéllar, CISAC visiting professor Jim Hathaway of the University of Michigan Law School, Roland Hsu of the Stanford Humanities Center and the NGO Asylum Access are convening a winter quarter working group on refugee rights. Stanford faculty will come from many departments to talk about the tension between providing emergency care and protecting refugee rights. 

CISAC led the UNHCR to the Stanford Geospatial Center, where students are working on four mapping projects to help refugees, including an interactive map that displays the density for refugees seeking shelter in that conflict. 

“Working with the UNHCR was truly a unique experience for us,” said Patricia Carbajales, geospatial manager at the Branner Earth Sciences Library who linked the students with the UNHCR advisers in Geneva and field offices around the world. “The students were completely engaged, understanding the importance that their projects had for UNHCR and, most importantly, for the refugees themselves.” 

The popularity of the projects has led to a new class in the spring, “GIS for Good: Applications for GIS for International Development and Humanitarian Relief.” 

Cuéllar and Elizabeth Gardner, associate director for partnerships and special projects at FSI, are working with UNHCR architects and the New York-based Ennead Architects Lab to develop new tools to expedite the complex process of laying out new refugee camps. 

Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service and the student-led Stanford in Government is making moves to permanently place interns or postgraduate fellows at UNHCR. FSI Senior Fellow Paul Wise, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford’s School of Medicine, will mentor that intern in the coming year. 

Meanwhile, out in the field, Rudolph doesn’t know if his UNHCR experience has forever changed his career path. He may come back to the valley and pick up where he left off; he may continue his humanitarian work. 

Either way, he says, “This work has really opened me up to a world of problems that are so vast it’s hard to grasp. It will be forever difficult to go back to my ignorant bliss.”

Ben Rudolph, center, with Sudanese refugees in a UNHCR refugee camp in Ethiopia, March 2013.

Nuclear energy is an essential engine that has helped to power South Korea’s industrialization and economic miracle. South Korea has become a world leader in both the domestic utilization of nuclear energy and its export potential. That journey began 40 years ago with the U.S.–South Korea Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (the so-called 123 Agreement). 

Despite its meteoric rise in nuclear power, South Korea faces serious challenges: It must demonstrate that nuclear power remains safe; that the government can convince the public to accept interim spent fuel storage and long-term geologic disposal; and that its choices of nuclear fuel cycle technologies do not compound global nuclear proliferation concerns. 

Because South Korea’s ascendency in nuclear power was built on close cooperation with American companies and was initially based on American technologies, its nuclear fuel-cycle choices remain in large part dependent on U.S. concurrence. 

The extent of U.S. control and influence of South Korea’s nuclear choices is the crux of the current negotiations for the renewal of the 40-year old agreement, which has been extended for two years until 2016. The position of the U.S. government appears to have been forged primarily on the pillar of nonproliferation. South Korea, on the other hand, views energy security, competitiveness of the industry, and its national security as equally important. The politics and symbolism of the negotiations appear to have obscured a rational analysis of South Korea’s nuclear future and its cooperation with the United States. 

A team of researchers led by me and others here at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) collaborated with a team from South Korea’s East Asia Institute, led by Professor Ha Young-Sun. Together we co-wrote a report, designed to look at these issues from both South Korean and American points of view.  

The CISAC team stepped back from the political stalemate and analyzed South Korea’s nuclear future based primarily on technical and economic considerations, but informed by the political situation. It conducted a TEP (technical, economic and political) analysis of the entire fuel cycle, which includes the front end (uranium mining and conversion; enrichment), the middle (fuel fabrication; reactor fabrication and construction; spent fuel storage) and back end (fuel reprocessing; spent fuel disposal; high-level waste disposal).

South Korea’s strategy of building a nuclear industry by focusing on the middle of the fuel cycle during the past several decades was brilliantly conceived and executed. Its nuclear industry is now among the best in the world. However, South Korea is advised to move to the construction of a centralized, away-from-reactor, dry-cask storage capability as quickly as possible. The TEP analysis finds it inadvisable for South Korea to pursue domestic enrichment in the short term because of the low technical and economic benefits, the ready global availability of enrichment services, and the substantial political downsides of pursuing such an option. In the longer term, if South Korea finds it needs enrichment capabilities as a hedge against supply disruption, large price fluctuations, or to enhance its reactor export potential, then it should pursue these strictly through international cooperative ventures.

South Korea’s strategy of building a nuclear industry by focusing on the middle of the fuel cycle during the past several decades was brilliantly conceived and executed."

 The TEP analysis also indicates that reprocessing spent fuel, either by the conventional PUREX process or by pyroprocessing, is not critical to South Korea’s short-term domestic program or its export market. Even if pyroprocessing can be shown to be technically and economically viable, its commercial development cannot be achieved rapidly enough to deal with South Korea’s near-term spent fuel accumulation problem. Moreover, the deployment of pyroprocessing faces considerable U.S. opposition. 

The best short-term option is to continue a robust pyroprocessing research program, preferably in cooperation with the United States as it is currently envisioned in the 10-year joint R&D program. In the longer term, the best prospects for the application of pyroprocessing are as a part of a fast reactor development program. The South Korean research team believes that pyroprocessing is an economically attractive alternative even for their current once-through fuel cycle; that is, it need not await the development of fast reactors because of the high cost of spent-fuel storage and eventual disposition in South Korea. 

Regardless of future fuel cycle choices, it is essential for South Korea to take immediate actions to restore the public’s trust in the nuclear industry. The government must deal resolutely with the industry’s alleged corruption problems and strengthen the government’s regulatory organizations dealing with all aspects of South Korea’s nuclear industry, as well as instill greater transparency and attention to quality matters in the Korean nuclear industry. This issue is closely tied to nuclear safety, which must remain the nuclear industry’s highest priority. 

Although the prospective terms for renewing the 123 Agreement were not a direct part of this study, we offer some overarching observations. First, the renewal should strive to develop a South Korea–U.S. partnership that reflects the enormous progress made in South Korea’s economic, political and industrial standing in the world since 1974. 

Second, Washington should not insist on the so-called nonproliferation “gold standard” adopted for the United Arab Emirates, in which countries developing nuclear energy pledge not to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. Instead, the United States should strive for a criteria-based standard that better reflects a country’s technical, political, regulatory, and industrial capacity, as well as its nonproliferation record. 

Third, the agreement should not be constrained by the North Korean nuclear problem. Pyongyang has clearly violated the letter and the spirit of the 1992 North-South agreement. The nature of South Korea’s civilian nuclear capabilities has little, if any, influence on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. 

Finally, we should not allow the controversies over the terms of renewal for the 123 Agreement to overshadow what we view as the most important domestic and international consequence of South Korea’s meteoric rise as an industrial and nuclear energy power: It has emerged as a model state for future nuclear power aspirants by focusing on the middle of the nuclear fuel cycle. 

Robert Mueller became director of the FBI one week before 9/11 and spent the next 12 years adding global terrorists to the agency’s most-wanted list of gangsters, kidnappers and bank robbers – and aggressively hunting them down.

Now, two months after leaving the job that allowed him to transform the FBI and focus its agents more on counterterrorism and emerging threats like cyber crimes, Mueller will work closely with Stanford scholars to better understand the challenges and issues surrounding international security and online networks.

At the invitation of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School, Mueller will spend the current academic year as a consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne Distinguished Lecturer.

He will also visit the Haas Center for Public Service and meet with students to discuss leadership and service around cybersecurity, and work through FSI to train and mentor undergraduate students.

"I look forward to working with the students and faculty of Stanford to address critical issues of the day, including counterterrorism, cybersecurity and shepherding institutions through transition,” Mueller said. “Having worked on these issues as FBI director over the last several years, I hope to pass on the lessons I have learned to those who will be our leaders of tomorrow.  For my part, I hope to gain fresh insight and new thoughts and ideas for the challenges our country continues to face."  

Mueller will make several visits to Stanford, spending about 30 days on campus during the academic year. His first visit comes next week, and will be marked by his delivery of the Payne lecture on Nov. 15. The public talk will focus on the FBI’s role in safeguarding national security. It will be held at 4:30 p.m. at the Koret-Taube Conference Center in the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building.

“Bob Mueller is an extraordinary public servant who will bring an enormously important perspective to some of the most complex security issues in the world,” said FSI Director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar. “We’re excited that he can help shape our research agenda on cybersecurity and other security issues.”

Mueller will spend the year working with FSI and Stanford Law School scholars to develop research agendas on emerging issues in international security. He will hold graduate seminars and deliver a major lecture at the law school and work with students and fellows at the Haas Center, the law school and the Graduate School of Business. He will also mentor honors students at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

"Robert Mueller has been a federal prosecutor and the nation’s leading law enforcement official during very difficult times.  We are thrilled he will be interacting with our students and faculty because he has much to teach us,” said M. Elizabeth Magill, dean of the law school. "His unique perspective on the intersection of law and international security will be tremendously beneficial to our community.  We are delighted to welcome Director Mueller back to Stanford Law School."

As the FBI’s chief, Mueller created a dedicated cybersecurity squad in each of its field offices and dedicated about 1,000 agents and analysts to fight Web-based crimes. At Stanford, he will bring together academics and practitioners with an eye toward creating an unofficial diplomacy dialogue.

“Should a terrorist utilize cyber capabilities to undertake an attack, it could be devastating,” he said just before leaving the FBI in September. “We have to be prepared.”

Mueller received a bachelor’s from Princeton in 1966 and a master’s in international relations from New York University a year later. He fought in Vietnam as a Marine, leading a rifle platoon and earning the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. After leaving the military, Mueller enrolled at the University of Virginia Law School and received his law degree in 1973.

He began his law career as a litigator in San Francisco, and in 1976 began a 12-year career serving in United States Attorney’s offices in San Francisco and Boston focusing on financial fraud, terrorist and public corruption cases. He worked for two law firms before returning to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., where he was a senior homicide investigator.

He was named U.S. Attorney in San Francisco in 1998, and held that job until President George W. Bush tapped him to lead the FBI. His first day on the job was Sept. 4, 2001.

“When I first came on board, I thought I had a fair idea of what to expect,” Mueller said during his farewell ceremony at the FBI ‘s headquarters in Washington “But the September 11 attacks altered every expectation.”

Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at CISAC, writes in this commentary for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that North Korea's decision to restart its 5-megawatt nuclear reactor is a big step back for denuclearization.

"The most likely technical scenario is that the North Koreans will operate the restarted 5-megawatt reactor for two years with a full load of 8,000 fuel rods, cool this spent fuel and extract roughly 10 to 12 kilograms of plutnoium within three years," he writes.

Therefore, he expects Pyongyang to gain one bomb's worth of plutonium a year.

Academics from American, European and Asian universities came together September 19th and 20th to present their research on the large-scale movements of people, and engage in a multidisciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives.  This installment of the Europe Center - University of Vienna bi-annual series of conferences and workshops was held on the Stanford campus and co-sponsored by The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

For the agenda, please visit the event website Migration and Integration: Global and Local Dimensions.