Sonja Schmid (speaker) is a social science research associate at Stanford University. Having received her Ph.D. in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University, she is now a science fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and affiliated with the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford. Her research has focused on understanding complex decision-making processes at the interface between science, technology, and the state in the Cold War Soviet context, and is based on extensive archival research and narrative interviews with nuclear energy specialists in Russia. She is currently working on a book about reactor design choices and the development of the civilian nuclear industry in the Soviet Union. In addition, she is involved in an international research project on Cold War Technopolitics and Colonialism, where she works on Soviet technology transfer to Central and Eastern Europe. Her research interests also include risk communication, and the popularization of science and technology, subjects on which she has published in the past.

Rebecca Slayton (respondent) is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Stanford University and a CISAC affiliate. In 2004-2005 she was a CISAC science fellow. Her research examines how technical judgments are generated, taken up, and given significance in international security contexts. She is currently working on a book which uses the history of the U.S. ballistic missile defense program to study the relationships between and among technology, expertise, and the media. Portions of this work have been published in journals such as History and Technology and have been presented at academic conferences. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she recently completed an NSF-funded project entitled Public Science: Discourse about the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983-1988. As a physical chemist, she developed ultrafast laser experiments in condensed matter systems and published several articles in physics journals. She also received the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2000, and has worked as a science journalist for a daily paper and for Physical Review Focus. She earned her doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University in 2002.

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

After the DPRK's nuclear test on October 9, 2006, denuclearization of the DPRK became an urgent issue that must be achieved as soon as possible to restrain an arms race in Northeast Asia. For denuclearization of the DPRK, issues of verification of dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons programs are the most critical elements if an agreement can be reached between the U.S. and the DPRK. Objectives of the verification and dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons programs are disposition of currently existing nuclear material, nuclear weapons, relevant facilities, nuclear workers and documents, and discontinuation of future clandestine production of those things, i.e., terminating the nuclear production capability of the DPRK. Kang will speak about technical aspects of the DPRK nuclear weapons program, including an idea on the disablement of 5 MWe graphite reactors at Yongbyon and major issues in the verification and dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear weapons programs.

Jungmin Kang is a science fellow at CISAC. Kang brings to the study of nuclear policy issues considerable expertise in technical analyses of nuclear energy issues, based on his studies in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Kang has co-authored articles on the proliferation-resistance of advanced fuel cycles, spent-fuel storage, plutonium disposition, and South Korea's undeclared uranium enrichment and plutonium experiments. He has contributed many popular articles to South Korea's newspapers and magazines and is frequently interviewed about spent-fuel issues and the negotiations over North Korea's nuclear-weapon program. Kang's recent research focuses on technical analysis of issues related to nuclear weapons and energy of North Korea as well as spent-fuel issues in Northeast Asia. Kang serves on South Korea's Presidential Commission on Sustainable Development where he advises on nuclear energy policy and spent fuel management.

Kang received a PhD in nuclear engineering from Tokyo University, Japan, and MS and BS degrees in nuclear engineering from Seoul National University, South Korea. Kang worked in Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security for two years in 1998-2000.

Leonard Weiss is a senior science fellow at CISAC and a consultant to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He began his professional career as a researcher in mathematical system theory at the Research Institute for Advanced Studies in Baltimore. This was followed by tenured professorships in applied mathematics and electrical engineering at Brown University and the University of Maryland. During this period he published widely in the applied mathematics literature. In 1976 he received a Congressional Science Fellowship that resulted in a career change. For more than two decades he worked for Senator John Glenn as the staff director of both the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation and the Committee on Governmental Affairs. He was the chief architect of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978 and other legislation sponsored by Senator Glenn. Since retiring from the Senate staff in 1999, he has published numerous articles on nonproliferation issues for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Arms Control Today, and other journals. In 2003-4 he chaired the Federation of American Scientists' Advisory Committee on Weapons in Space which produced the FAS report entitled "Ensuring America's Space Security." His research at CISAC includes an assessment of the impact on the nonproliferation regime of nuclear trade with non-signers of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Within the last 10 years several non-proliferation programs have been realized in Uzbekistan. Those programs include actions on upgrading physical protection systems of facilities possessing nuclear reactors and powerful radioactive sources, measures on improving nuclear security and radioactive safety, equipping the country's exit/entry points in order to prevent illicit trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials, improving safeguards and radioactive monitoring of environment. Special attention was given to conversion of research reactors to low enrichment uranium and treatment of highly enriched fresh and spent reactor fuel. The programs have been performed in cooperation with U.S. energy and defense departments, the International Atomic Energy Agency and related institutions.

Bekhzod Yuldashev is a CISAC science fellow. He served as a consultant-advisor at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2006-2007. Prior to that, he was director-general of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Uzbekistan Academy of Science from 1990 to 2006. From 1984 to 1990, he served as head of the laboratory in the Physical Technical Institute in Tashkent, where he had been a senior researcher since 1972.

Yuldashev has published about 300 scientific papers dedicated to various subjects of particle and nuclear physics in the wide range of primary energies. In particular, he experimentally obtained the first evidence of dibaryon resonances, discovered the effect of emitting energetic nucleons from local subsystems in nuclei, observed anomalously high production of eta-mesons and cumulative delta-isobars on nuclei and has experimentally proven that production and decay of vector and tensor resonances are the origins of so-called leading pions with an opposite sign to the primary one in high energy interactions. He has more than 20 patents on nuclear applications.

He is a full member of the Academy of Science of Uzbekistan and served as the academy's president from September 2000 through November 2005. In 2000-2004 he was elected a Member of Parliament of the Republic of Uzbekistan, and in 2004-2005 was elected a Senator.

He is a fellow of Islamic Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Physical Society. From 1992 to 2002, he was an elected member of the Scientific Council of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, in Dubna, Russia, one of two international nuclear centers in the world. He is also a member of the IAEA's Standing Advisory Group for Nuclear Applications, a fellow of the Islamic Countries Academy, and foreign member of the National Academy of Kazakhstan. He is an honorary professor of Samarkand State University and honorary doctor of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (2004). He won the 2004 Economic Cooperation Organization's excellence award in science and technology and the 1983 Uzbekistan State Prize for Science and Technology.

Yuldashev graduated from Tashkent and Moscow Universities in 1968. He earned his PhD in physics and mathematics from the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia, in 1971.

Pavel Podvig (speaker) joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He worked as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years.

Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

His research has focused on technical and political issues of missile defense, space security, U.S.-Russian relations, structure and capabilities of the Russian strategic forces, and nuclear nonproliferation. He was the head of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces research project and the editor of a book of the same title, which is considered a definitive source of information on Russian strategic forces.

Theodore Postol (discussant) is a professor of science, technology and national security policy in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. He did his undergraduate work in physics and his graduate work in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After receiving his Ph.D., Postol joined the staff of Argonne National Laboratory, where he studied the microscopic dynamics and structure of liquids and disordered solids using neutron, x-ray and light scattering, along with computer molecular dynamics techniques. Subsequently he went to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to study methods of basing the MX Missile, and later worked as a scientific adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. After leaving the Pentagon, Postol helped to build a program at Stanford University to train mid-career scientists to study developments in weapons technology of relevance to defense and arms control policy. In 1990 Postol was awarded the Leo Szilard Prize from the American Physical Society. In 1995 he received the Hilliard Roderick Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 2001 he received the Norbert Wiener Award from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility for uncovering numerous and important false claims about missile defenses.