FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
More information TBA.
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Abstract:
Nipah virus lives in large fruit bats in South and Southeast Asia. When people become infected with Nipah virus over half of them die. Nipah virus can also be transmitted from person to person. This talk will describe how this bat virus occasionally infects human populations and causes outbreaks through person-to-person transmission. It will explore the risk of a global pandemic of Nipah virus and consider appropriate policy responses.
Speaker bio:
Stephen Luby is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine; Deputy Director for Research at the Center for Global Health Innovation; Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.
Dr. Luby studied philosophy and earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Creighton University. Dr. Luby earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester-Strong Memorial Hospital. He studied epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Luby's former positions include leading the Epidemiology Unit of the Community Health Sciences Department at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan for 5 years and working as a Medical Epidemiologist in the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exploring causes and prevention of diarrheal disease in settings where diarrhea is a leading cause of childhood death. Immediately prior to his current appointment, Dr. Luby served for eight years at the International Centre for Diarrheal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), where he directed the Centre for Communicable Diseases. Dr. Luby was seconded from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and was the Country Director for CDC in Bangladesh.
Dr. Luby's research has focused on clarifying the burden of several communicable diseases in low income countries and developing and evaluating practical strategies to mitigate their impact. He is currently exploring circumstances where economic and political forces encourage environmental degradation that exerts substantial disease burden in low income countries, with a view to developing and evaluating interventions.
CISAC Central Conference Room
Africa (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2013): USAID and the UN's World Food Program have proposed strategies for allocating ready-to-use (therapeutic and supplementary) foods to children in developing countries. Analysis is needed to investigate whether there are better alternatives. We use a longitudinal data set of 5657 children from Bwamanda to construct a statistical model that tracks each child's height and weight throughout the first five years of life. We embed this model into an optimization framework that chooses which individual children should receive food based on a child's sex, age, height and weight, to minimize the mean number of disability-adjusted life years per child subject to a budget constraint. Our proposed policy compares favorably to those proposed by the aid groups. Time permitting, we will also discuss a recent analysis of a nutrition program in Guatemala that quantifies the age dependence in the impact of supplementary food, and develops a food allocation policy that exploits this age dependence and reduces child stunting.
India: Motivated by India's nationwide biometric program for social inclusion, we analyze verification (i.e., one-to-one matching) in the case where we possess 12 similarity scores (for 10 fingerprints and two irises) between a resident's biometric images at enrollment and his biometric images during his first verification. At subsequent verifications, we allow individualized strategies based on these 12 scores: we acquire a subset of the 12 images, get new scores for this subset that quantify the similarity to the corresponding enrollment images, and use the likelihood ratio to decide whether a resident is genuine or an imposter. Compared to the policy currently used in India, our proposed policy provides a five-log (i.e., 100,000-fold) reduction in the false reject rate while only increasing the mean delay from 31 to 38 seconds.
A full speaker bio is available on CISAC's website.
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Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-5015
Lawrence Wein is the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Management Science at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and an affiliated faculty member at CISAC. After getting a PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University in 1988, he spent 14 years at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, where he was the DEC Leaders for Manufacturing Professor of Management Science. His research interests include mathematical models in operations management, medicine and biology.
Since 2001, he has analyzed a variety of homeland security problems. His homeland security work includes four papers in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on an emergency response to a smallpox attack, an emergency response to an anthrax attack, a biometric analysis of the US-VISIT Program, and an analysis of a bioterror attack on the milk supply. He has also published the Washington Post op-ed "Unready for Anthrax" (2003) and the New York Times op-ed "Got Toxic Milk?", and has written papers on port security, indoor remediation after an anthrax attack, and the detention and removal of illegal aliens.
For his homeland security research, Wein has received several awards from the International Federation of Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), including the Koopman Prize for the best paper in military operations research, the INFORMS Expository Writing Award, the INFORMS President’s Award for contributions to society, the Philip McCord Morse Lectureship, the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize for best research publication, and the George E. Kimball Medal. He was Editor-in-Chief of Operations Research from 2000 to 2005, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009.
Over the last several years the landscape for money movement has changed dramatically. Non-state-backed digital currencies such as Bitcoin have introduced new paradigms for money movement in which transfers are public but the identities of the individuals behind the transfers are masked. Traditional currencies are being moved in novel ways as well. In the developing world, unbanked populations are engaging in an increasingly sophisticated array of financial transactions using mobile phone-based mobile money services.
These changes present both opportunities and challenges. Mobile money, for example, has become a vital tool for financial inclusion for tens of millions of people in the developing world. Yet, all mechanisms for moving (and storing) money—new and old—involve risks and the potential for misuse. This seminar, which will be structured as a highly interactive facilitated discussion, aims to explore ways to realize the benefits of technologically facilitated money movement, while also providing frameworks minimizing the risk of misuse.
Speaker bio:
John Villasenor is a professor of electrical engineering and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a CISAC Affiliate. His work addresses the intersection of digital technology with public policy and the law.
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John Villasenor is on the faculty at UCLA, where he is a professor of electrical engineering, public policy, law, and management as well as the director of the Institute for Technology, Law and Policy. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Villasenor’s work considers the broader impacts of key technology trends, including the growth of artificial intelligence, advances in digital communications, and the increasing complexity of today’s networks and systems. He writes frequently on these topics and on their implications with respect to cybersecurity, privacy, law, and business.
He has published in the Atlantic, Billboard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Fast Company, Forbes, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Scientific American, Slate, the Washington Post, and in many academic journals. He has also provided congressional testimony on multiple occasions on topics including drones, privacy, and intellectual property law.
Before joining the faculty at UCLA, Villasenor was with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he developed methods of imaging the earth from space. He holds a BS from the University of Virginia and an MS and PhD from Stanford University.
About the Topic: This presentation includes a review of significant trends in the development of nuclear energy in China, from the mid1980's until the present, and related future prospects. Among the subjects covered will be: nuclear technology development based on competition/cooperation between a giant state owned enterprise and an upstart commercial utility from the south; different development goals and technology development by the two corporations; the impact of Fukushima on nuclear energy developments in China; the current status of the Chinese nuclear energy system; future growth prospects considering a range of different challenges in the industry; and nuclear technology development prospects and intellectual property issues.
About the Speaker: Chaim Braun is a consulting professor at CISAC specializing in issues related to nuclear power economics and fuel supply, and nuclear nonproliferation. Braun pioneered the concept of proliferation rings dealing with the implications of the A.Q. Khan nuclear technology smuggling ring, the concept of the Energy Security Initiative (ESI), and the re-evaluation of nuclear fuel supply assurance measures, including nuclear fuel lease and take-back. Before joining CISAC, Braun worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. Prior to that, Braun worked at United Engineers and Constructors (UE&C), EPRI and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).
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Calling cybercrimes “the threat of the future,” former FBI Director Robert Mueller said federal investigators and businesses need to share information collected online in order to find and thwart hackers trying to disrupt Web-based networks.
“The intelligence that can be and is being collected by the private sector has to be made available in some way, shape or form to the federal government,” Mueller said. “And that which we pick up has to be made available to the private sector. If we do not get that kind of collaboration, we will replicate what we had before 9/11 when we had stovepipes and inadequate ways of sharing information.”
Mueller – who took over the FBI a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and left the job two months ago – made his comments Friday while delivering the Payne lecture at Stanford.
“Terrorism remains today our primary threat,” Mueller said. “But tomorrow, it will probably be cyber and its various iterations.”
He said cybercrimes present a new challenge to law enforcement agencies because perpetrators are often anonymous and their motives are not always clear.
A hacker could be associated with a terrorist organization, an activist group or “an 18-year-old in his garage here in Silicon Valley who has the talent and capability and wants to make a point.”
And if the bad guy can’t be easily fingered, it’s difficult to know who should investigate the crime – the FBI, CIA, NSA or another agency. In order to pool federal resources, Mueller said a task force composed of 18 agencies works to examine cyber threats.
But their efforts to safeguard online financial, government, corporate and educational systems will go only so far without the expertise, knowledge and information gathered by Internet service providers.
“It is going to be the relationships with the private sector that are going to be absolutely critical to any success we can have in addressing cyber attacks,” he said.
Mueller’s lecture capped his weeklong visit at Stanford. He was invited by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School to spend the academic year as a consulting professor and as the Payne Distinguished Lecturer.
The Payne Lectureship is named for Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. The position is given to someone with an international reputation as a leader, with an emphasis on visionary thinking; a broad, practical grasp of a given field; and the capacity to clearly articulate an important perspective on the global community and its challenges.
FSI Director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar called Mueller a “perfect fit for Stanford.”
“His career embodies what I take to be the ethos of this university –practical yet principled; sensitive to complexity but also to the value of clarity and focus,” Cuéllar said.
Mueller will make several visits to Stanford during the year, spending his time working with FSI and 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.
As the FBI’s longest-serving director after J. Edgar Hoover, Mueller presided over some of the most drastic changes in the agency’s history.
The Sept. 11 attacks forced the FBI to change its priorities, placing the hunt for global terrorists at the top if its list. The counterterrorism and counterintelligence missions meant hiring more analysts and replacing the FBI’s more traditional targeting of mobsters, murderers and white-collar criminals.
Recalling his first briefing to George W. Bush after the terrorist attacks, Mueller said he began by telling the president what his agents were doing to investigate. He had been on the job for about a week, and started giving a rundown of command centers that were set up, evidence that was being collected and interviews being conducted.
“I’m about two or three minutes into it and President Bush stops me and says, `Bob, that’s all well and good,’” Mueller said. “That’s what the FBI has been doing for the hundred years of its existence. My question to you is: What is FBI doing to prevent the next terrorist attack?”
The question stumped the new director.
“I had not prepared for that question,” he said.
And it’s a question he answered continuously during the Bush and Obama administrations, and one that led to his reorganization of the FBI.
“Over those 12 years, the question has not changed,” Mueller said. “The question from both of the presidents to the FBI, to the CIA, to the community when it comes to counterterrorism is: What have you done to prevent the next terrorist attack?”
ABOUT THE TOPIC: Culture is often understood as a system of "shared understandings." But what does that mean? Amir Goldberg argues that having a shared understanding with others does not necessarily imply espousing similar beliefs or attitudes. Rather, culture prescribes which beliefs and attitudes go with one another; sharing an understanding therefore suggests being in agreement about the structures of relevance and opposition that make symbols and actions meaningful. Amir uses relational class analysis - a network-based method for analyzing survey data - to map these structures, and find groups of people who share distinctive cultural schemes. This approach lends new insights into understanding the social underpinnings of Americans' complex understandings of music, politics, economic morality, and more.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Professor Goldberg received bachelors' degrees in Computer Science and Film Studies from Tel Aviv University, and an MA in Sociology from Goldsmith’s College, University of London. Before pursuing a PhD in Sociology at Princeton University, he worked for several years as a software programmer, an IT consultant and a technology journalist. An Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, his research projects all share an overarching theme: the desire to understand the social mechanisms that underlie how people construct meaning, and consequently pursue action. His work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, and he was awarded Princeton University’s Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship.
ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR: Marc Ventresca is University Lecturer in Strategic Management at Said Business School (University of Oxford), England's foremost graduate school of business. Dr. Ventresca, who earned his PhD in Sociology at Stanford, specializes in governance, entrepreneurship, market and network formation, and technology strategy.
CISAC Conference Room
About the Topic: The cyber security landscape has seen dramatic changes in recent years with the advent and evolution of new, growing, and ever-present adversaries. As targeted attacks and advanced adversaries continue to evolve and become increasingly sophisticated, it becomes difficult to keep pace and stay protected. Existing security technologies are incapable of identifying determined adversaries and protecting your intellectual property. Enterprises must combat these threats with targeted attack detection, prevention, and monitoring. By leveraging big data technologies and security intelligence, companies can proactively respond to advanced threats while also gaining the ability to hunt, query, and gain insight into all activity across the enterprise.
About the Speaker: Serial entrepreneur George Kurtz co-founded CrowdStrike, a cutting-edge, big data, security technology company focused on helping enterprises and governments protect their most sensitive intellectual property and national security information. Kurtz is an internationally recognized security expert, author, entrepreneur, and speaker. He has more than 20 years of experience in the security space, including extensive experience driving revenue growth and scaling small and large organizations. His entrepreneurial background and ability to commercialize nascent technologies has enabled him to drive innovation throughout his career by identifying market trends and correlating them with customer feedback, resulting in rapid growth for the businesses he has run.
His prior roles at McAfee, a $3-billion security company, include Worldwide Chief Technology Ocer and GM, as well as SVP of Enterprise. Prior to joining McAfee, Kurtz started Foundstone in October 1999 as the founder and CEO responsible for recruiting the other six founding team members. Foundstone, a world wide security products and services company, had one of the leading incident response practices in the industry, and was acquired by McAFee in October of 2004. He also authored the best-selling security book of all time, Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions.
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