Rod Ewing, a mineralogist and materials scientist who is an expert on nuclear waste management and policy, will join Stanford University to focus on sustainable energy, security and environmental research at the intersection of physical science and public policy.

Ewing has been named to a joint appointment as Professor of Geological and Environmental Sciences in the School of Earth Sciences and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, within the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He also becomes the inaugural Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security Studies, an endowed chair established with a $5 million gift from the Stanton Foundation.

Ewing was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2012 to serve as the chair of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which is responsible for the technical review of Department of Energy activities related to transporting, packaging, storing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

Ewing, who earned his Ph.D. at Stanford and was granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of excess weapons plutonium, is currently the Edward H. Kraus Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan.

He will take up his new position at Stanford next January and will help bridge Earth Sciences and CISAC to encourage collaboration on scientific and public policy projects.

“What is important to me is to be able to see the connections between subjects that, at first glance, do not appear to be connected,” said Ewing, a former visiting professor at CISAC. His research will continue to focus on the response of materials to extreme environments and the increasing demand for strategic minerals for use in the development of sustainable energy technologies.

Ewing, who has been at the University of Michigan for 16 years, will take advantage of Stanford’s state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, such as the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, for his work on the response of materials to extreme environments.

Ewing said in the past five years there has been growing interest in the performance of materials under extreme conditions, such as inside a nuclear reactor.

“There is a practical interest because new types of materials may form under extreme conditions that have never been previously synthesized,” he said. “And in some cases, these new materials may have very useful properties.”

He expects to teach courses in nuclear security, mineralogy, and energy issues.

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Pamela A. Matson, the Chester Naramore Dean of Earth Sciences at Stanford, said Ewing would help the school define a program in strategic minerals.

“This is an area of renewed interest to us, particularly in light of the need for these resources in renewable energy technologies,” Matson said. “To address the sustainability challenges of the 21^st century, we need to both innovate in science and technology areas, and also understand the social and political environments in which decisions are made – and Rod does both. We believe he will help us build a strong partnership between the School of Earth Sciences and CISAC, thus strengthening Stanford’s efforts to solve critical environment and energy problems.”

Ewing spent a year on sabbatical at CISAC during the 2010-2011 academic year. “The quality and diversity of topics really swept me away; everything from terrorism, to nuclear issues to the ethics of war,” he said of his year in Encina Hall.

“Rod Ewing will serve as a vital bridge between science and policy,” said Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Co-Director of CISAC.  “His research addresses fundamental questions about nuclear energy with enormous importance to global security.”

Ewing’s interest in nuclear science was sparked in childhood, when he saved up his allowance to buy the Disney book, “Our Friend the Atom.”

“Looking back at the book, one might call it propaganda, but it certainly captured my imagination,” said Ewing, who would go on to author or co-author more than 600 research publications and become the founding editor of the magazine, “Elements.”

As a graduate student on a National Science Foundation grant, he worked on a neglected field of metamict minerals, a relatively rare group of minerals damaged by radiation emitted by uranium and thorium atoms. The study of these unusual minerals in the last 30 years has blossomed into a broadly based research program on radiation effects in complex ceramic materials. This has led to the development of techniques to predict the long-term behavior of materials, such as those used in radioactive waste disposal.

Ewing will continue to chair the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board as the DOE continues its efforts to find, characterize and license a geological repository for highly radioactive nuclear waste.

“The first issue at hand in the United States is to develop a process for selecting a repository site,” said Ewing. “The challenge will be to combine scientific and technical criteria with the consent of local communities, tribal nations and states.”

Scott Sagan has several pieces of advice for young scholars coming up in the field of international security: pick worthy opponents, pick and invest in worthy friends, recruit and promote independent-minded students. And always be open to debate.

“You remember your jobs, your tenure, you remember your first book when it comes out and you hold it in your hands,” Sagan told some 300 scholars and former CISAC honors students and fellows as he was named the 2013 Distinguished Scholar in International Security Studies by the International Studies Association.

“You remember the times when sometimes, remarkably, you feel like you’ve had some policy impact. But among the things that I will always remember is tonight, because getting this award is wonderful,” Sagan said during the ceremony in San Francisco.

Sagan, a political science professor and senior fellow at CISAC and FSI, was praised during the ISA event for his contributions to the study of nuclear nonproliferation and his mentorship of many students who count him as a pivotal person in their professional lives.

“Scott is a truly outstanding and remarkably unusual mentor,” said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “One of the greatest ways for a scholar to affect the world is to mentor very talented young people. They may go on to be scholars or go into government or business or the news media – all of these enterprises that combine, in messy ways, to produce real-world action.”

Sagan – who founded the CISAC Honors Program in 2000 when he was co-director – is known on campus for his simulation classes and field trips to American battlefields. He has written nine books, dozens of articles and has been cited in thousands of publications related to nuclear nonproliferation and weapons of mass destruction, the development of first-use norms and the management of hazardous technology and South Asia.

  Scott literally changed my professional life." - Vipin NarangA panel discussion at the ISA’s annual convention – the largest gathering of security scholars in the world – was convened to give an overview of Sagan’s contributions to scholarship and teaching. It was at times political, at times moving – and at times felt like a roast, with plenty of ribbing about Sagan’s seemingly perfect hair and owl-eyed glasses.

“He has the most perfect hair of any senior scholar,” said Vipin Narang, a former CISAC honors student. “He used to have these round glasses, such that when I first saw him in 2000, I thought, `This is what Harry Pottery will look like in 40 years.’”

Peter D. Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University, recalled the first time he met Sagan. He was a poor graduate student living on macaroni and cheese, flying back from a research trip when he passed Sagan in first class.

“As I walked down the aisle, I see out of the corner of my eye this very distinguished guy with flecks of gray hair, probably a movie star, sitting up in first class,” Feaver said. “I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, but then I said to myself, `But I’m pursuing the life of the mind and those people up there, they are crass materialists who are working in Hollywood or whatever.’”

Feaver, who worked in both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said it finally came to him that the distinguished gentleman in first class was Sagan.

“He graciously came back for a little while to give me some words of encouragement – and he’s been giving me words of encouragement from first class ever since.”

Past winners of the annual prize have included such notable scholars as Jack Snyder, Robert Jervis, Thomas Schelling and Sagan’s renown writing partner, Kenneth Waltz. Sagan and Waltz argue for and against nuclear nonproliferation, respectively, in their landmark book, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate.”

     We’re all involved in the same enterprise: trying to find truth and trying to make an impact.” - SaganNina Tannenwald, a senior lecturer in political science at Brown University whose work focuses on international institutions, norms and global security issues, said she and Sagan don’t always agree on policy, but that she rarely disagrees with his methods. She credits Sagan with making great contributions to nuclear nonproliferation norms.

“Scott’s interest in norms is reflected in his policy work and I want to talk here about his article, “The Case for No First Use,” which was published in Survival in 2009,” said Tannenwald, author of “The Nuclear Taboo” and currently a Franklin Fellow in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation in the U.S. State Department.

“His argument about no first-use has been made in the past by others, but Scott’s contribution is to make a very sophisticated case that declaratory policy matters,” Tannenwald said. “Now realists of course think that declaratory policy is cheap talk. But Scott makes the very constructivist argument that declaratory policy matters for both military planning domestically and internationally.”

Other scholars who spoke in praise of Sagan included Charles Perrow, a professor emeritus in sociology at Yale University and Todd Sechser, an assistant professor of politics at University of Virginia, as well as handful of former Stanford students.

Narang, a Stanton nuclear fellow at CISAC this academic year, gave a a moving tribute to Scott’s role as mentor. He was a Stanford senior in 2000, majoring in chemical engineering and bored by his lab work, when he took one of Sagan’s classes.

The proverbial light bulb went off in his head.

“Scott literally changed my professional life,” said Narang, recruited by Sagan for the first CISAC honors class. He recalled how Sagan taught him how to write his thesis about India’s chemical weapons program using the classic social science method: find a puzzle, come up with a theory to solve it, establish alternative explanations – and then test it.

“I would have been an unhappy researcher in rural Pennsylvania playing with bacteria if not for Scott’s vision to found the honors programs and to take undergraduates and train them in a hands-on way about the social science process,” Narang said.

Today, Narang is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused on nuclear nonproliferation and South Asian security.

He said Sagan is know as “Scott Singh Sagan” in South Asia due to his pioneering book, “Inside Nuclear South Asia,” which is widely cited by Pakistani and Indian scholars.

“It has been probably the most foundational work in the study of South Asia nuclear weapons in the field,” Narang said. “And in addition to the scholarship and the influence he’s had on young scholars such as myself in this area, he has been responsible for bringing Indian and Pakistani military fellows to CISAC for sort of his own Track II discussions that have helped Indians and Pakistanis understand each other’s doctrines.”

Sagan, drawing the event to a close with his advice to young security scholars, said that choosing the right professional opponents and personal friends would impact their lives.

“Pick worthy opponents. Argue with them. Ken Waltz; what more worthy opponent to have?” Sagan said. “Pick and invest in worthy friends and some of the people who are the opponents intellectually will become the friends personally, because we’re all involved in the same enterprise: trying to find truth and trying to make an impact.”