A major component of the strategy to prevent attacks with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) by transnational terrorist groups requires the widespread utilization of chemical, biological and radiological detection systems. Whether or not one can actually deploy these sensors may well depend on the public perception of the sensor's invasion of their privacy and the court's interpretation of the sensors' challenge to the Constitution's search and seizure protections. However, if scientists and engineers designing new sensors take cognizance of the perspective taken by courts in the past, they will stand a much better chance of providing technical solutions that will balance the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties against the modern realities of terrorist threats. This seminar will discuss and solicit ideas on how legal interpretations of the fourth Amendment can be used to help design modern sensor systems.

Don Prosnitz is currently the deputy drector (programs) for nonproliferation, homeland and international security at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and is responsible for overseeing all of the directorate's technical programs. He received his BS from Yale University and his PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then spent two years as an assistant professor in the Engineering and Applied Science Department at Yale before joining Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as an experimental laser physicist. Over the next three decades, he conducted research on lasers, particle accelerators, high-power microwaves, free-electron lasers, and remote sensing, and managed the design, construction, and operation of numerous research facilities. In 1990, he was awarded the U.S. Particle Accelerator Award for Achievement in Accelerator Physics and Technology; in 2002, he was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has served on multiple technical panels, including a Defense Science Board study and various intelligence committees. He is currently a member of the National Academies of Science Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology. In 1996, Prosnitz was briefly detailed to the Department of Energy where he provided technical support to the Office of Nonproliferation and National Security. In 1999, Prosnitz was named the chief science and technology advisor for the Department of Justice (DOJ) by Attorney General Janet Reno. In this newly created position, he was responsible for coordinating technology policy among the DOJ's component agencies and with state and local law enforcement entities on science and technology projects and programs. He served on numerous interagency working groups and federal committees, including the National Science and Technology Council, the Data Management Improvement Act Task Force (immigration systems), and the National Human Research Protections Advisory Committee. He advised the attorney general and DOJ officials and component agencies, such as the FBI, DEA, and former INS (Immigration and Nationalization Service), on such technical matters as weapons of mass destruction, forensics, human subject protection, immunization policy, immigration policy, biometrics, border protection, and information technology. In 2003 he returned to LLNL where he promotes continuing education of the workforce with a special emphasis on the interaction of society and technology.

In this talk James Fearon will be speaking about his forthcoming article, "The Civil War in Iraq," in the March-April 2007 Foreign Affairs.

James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, a professor of political science and CISAC affiliated faculty member at Stanford University. His research has focused on democracy and international disputes, explanations for interstate wars, and, most recently, the causes of civil and especially ethnic violence. He is presently working on a book manuscript (with David Laitin) on civil war since 1945. Representative publications include "Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States" (International Security, Spring 2004), "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War" (American Political Science Review, February 2003), and "Rationalist Explanations for War" (International Organization, Summer 1995).

Fearon won the 1999 Karl Deutsch Award, which is "presented annually to a scholar under the age of forty, or within ten years of the acquisition of his or her Doctoral Degree, who is judged to have made, through a body publications, the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research." He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 2002.

Plutonium (Pu) and highly enriched uranium (HEU), the fissile material that is the sine qua non of nuclear weapons, manifest fingerprints that are unique to the manufacturing processes employed in their creation. Such fingerprints are not as clear as those made famous by the FBI for decades, or as DNA is today, but they are fingerprints, nonetheless. The technical challenge is to develop the processes that will link, beyond reasonable doubt, the fissile material to its manufacturer. If the technical challenges can be met, political challenges lay beyond and must be resolved before the civilized world can be assured that the fissile material that generates a nuclear explosion can be traced to its source, but if it can, many benefits to society will result. Among these are deterrence of potential suppliers, credible delay in reacting to nuclear terrorism, and international cooperation of the highest sort.

Harold Smith holds the appointment of distinguished visiting scholar and professor with the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), where he focuses on the impact of technology on foreign and defense policy. In 1993, Smith served as assistant to the scretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs during the Clinton administration. In 1960 he joined the faculty of UCB where he retired as professor and chairman of the Department of Applied Science in 1976. Smith was awarded a White House Fellowship in 1966 and was assigned as a special assistant to the secretary of defense. Since that time, he has served as an advisor to numerous governmental boards on national security policy. Of particular note are his chairmanship of the Vulnerability Task Force of the Defense Science Board and a special study for (then) Secretary of Defense Schlesinger on the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS); i.e. the Smith Report. He has published in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, and Arms Control Today. He received his PhD in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Bill Dunlop is currently a senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and has held numerous positions during his career there, including serving as the project manager for strategic missile and defensive weapons systems, the program manager for the development of the W87 warhead for the MX missile, and the program manager for earth penetrator weapons. From 1985 until 1990 he was the division leader overseeing work on thermonuclear weapons development. From January 1994 until December 1995, he served as the technical advisor to the U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament. The principal activity during this period in the Conference on Disarmament was the negotiation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. After his return from Geneva, Dunlop resumed the leadership of the Arms Control and Treaty Verification Program, which later was renamed the Proliferation Prevention and Arms Control (PPAC) Program. He continues to work part-time at LLNL where he is involved cargo security issues and defense activities. Dunlop received his BA in physics from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his MS in physics and his PhD in nuclear physics from the Univesity of California, Los Angeles.

Over five years since 9/11, the United States is still struggling to define the nature of the terrorist challenge it faces let alone fully comprehend it. As a consequence, the United States and its partners in the "global war on terror" still lack a comprehensive strategy for responding to the challenge. Drawing on a growing area of social science research relating to "social contagion" phenomena, the challenge posed by "Islamist militancy" will be assessed using the principles and practices of epidemiology. A new more promising strategy emerges as a consequence.

Paul B. Stares is vice president of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and director of its Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. He currently focuses on northeast Asian security issues, U.S. post-conflict stability operations, and counterterrorism policy. He has authored or edited nine books in addition to numerous book chapters, articles, and op-eds in leading U.S. and European newspapers. In 2006, Stares led the Iraq Study Groups Strategic Environment Expert Working Group.

Prior to joining USIP in 2002, Stares was associate director and senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. From 1996 to 2000 he worked in Japan, first as a senior research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs and then as director of studies at the Japan Center for International Exchange. At various times, Stares has been a senior fellow and research associate in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution as well as a NATO fellow, a scholar-in-residence at the MacArthur Foundation Moscow Office, a Rockefeller International Relations Fellow, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

He has also held academic posts at the University of Sussex and the University of Lancaster in Great Britain, where he received his PhD.

Biological forensics has made considerable strides in the past decade, in part, due to advances in DNA analysis and, in part, due to advances other microscopic diagnostic techniques such as atomic force microscopy to analyze structural properties of microorganisms and secondary-ion mass spectrometry to analyze the chemical constituents of microorganisms. This talk will cover recent advances in the field of microbial forensics with application to potential bioterror attacks, excluding investigations that currently are ongoing.

Paul Jackson is the forensics group leader within the Biosciences Directorate at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and, prior to that, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jackson is currently a member of the FBI Working Group for Forensic Analysis of Microbial Evidence. His past research has involved analyses of anthrax samples from the 1979 anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, Russia, and the 2001 anthrax letter attacks in the United States. His current research focuses on genetic typing methods applied to biological toxins such as Ricin. He received his BS from the University of Washington and his PhD from the University of Utah.

The speaker will describe his experiences over ten years of developing a comprehensive program to engage the formerly top secret Soviet biological weapons complex through joint scientific research and disease surveillance. He will also discuss how lessons learned can be applied to potential new efforts to reduce global threats of bioterrorism and potential pandemics.

Andrew Weber is the adviser for cooperative threat reduction policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. His responsibilities include developing and overseeing CTR biological threat reduction programs in the former Soviet Union, and nuclear and chemical weapons threat reduction projects in Central Asia. Before coming to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 1996, Weber served as a U.S. Foreign Service officer in Saudi Arabia, Germany, Kazakhstan, and Hong Kong. Weber holds an MSFS degree from Georgetown University and a BA from Cornell University. He speaks Russian. Weber is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Graduate School of Foreign Service.