Science and Technology
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Patrick Johnston is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a CISAC predoctoral fellow. His dissertation, "Humanitarian Intervention and the Strategic Logic of Mass Atrocities in Civil Wars," asks why ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence frequently increase dramatically after international actors threaten to intervene militarily or deploy significant numbers of troops in coercive interventions. Johnston received a BA in history and a BA in political science, both with distinction, from the University of Minnesota, Morris and an MA in political science from Northwestern University.

Stephen J. Stedman joined CISAC in 1997 as a senior research scholar, and was named a senior fellow at FSI and CISAC and professor of political science (by courtesy) in 2002. He served as the center's acting co-director for the 2002-2003 academic year. Currently he directs the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies at Stanford and CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. His current research addresses the future of international organizations and institutions, an area of study inspired by his recent work at the United Nations. In the fall of 2003 he was recruited to serve as the research director of the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Upon completion of the panel's report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Annan asked Stedman to stay on at the U.N. as a special advisor with the rank of assistant secretary-general, to help gain worldwide support in implementing the panel's recommendations. Following the U.N. world leaders' summit in September 2005, during which more than 175 heads of state agreed upon a global security agenda developed from the panel's work, Stedman returned to CISAC. Before coming to Stanford, Stedman was an associate professor of African studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations on issues of peacekeeping in civil war, light weapons proliferation and conflict in Africa, and preventive diplomacy. In 2000 Scott Sagan and he founded the CISAC Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. Stedman received his PhD in political science from Stanford University in 1988.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Patrick Johnston Predoctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-2705 (650) 724-2996
0
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
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Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.

In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.

His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Stephen J. Stedman Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) and Senior Fellow Commentator CISAC and FSI
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Edward Miguel received his PhD at Harvard in 2000, the same year he joined UC Berkeley as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2005. He recently received the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Best Paper in Health Economics for "Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities" (with Michael Kremer), which appeared in Econometrica. He also was the recipient of the 2005 Sloan Fellowship. At Berkeley he has received the Best Graduate Adviser Award and the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Professor Miguel is co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources, associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics and Review of Economics and Statistics, director of the U.C. Berkeley Scientific Evaluation for Global Action program, co-organizer for Working Group in African Political Economy, associate director at CIDER, an NBER faculty research associate, a CEPR research fellow, a senior fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and a research affiliate at the MIT Poverty Action Lab. He also has worked as a consultant for non-governmental organizations on projects in Delhi, Kenya, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Edward Miguel Associate Professor of Economics Speaker University of California, Berkeley
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Teresa Whitfield (speaker) joined the Social Science Research Council in early March 2005 to direct the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF). Her latest book, Friends Indeed: the United Nations, Groups of Friends and the Resolution of Conflict, was researched and written while a visiting fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation. From 1995-2000 Teresa worked as an official within the UN’s Department of Political Affairs, latterly in the Office of the Under-Secretary-General of Political Affairs. She has also worked as a consultant with the Ford Foundation and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and has a long association with CPPF, serving as regional advisor on Latin America from 2001-2003 and as acting director from 2001-2002. Her research interests include the United Nations, peace operations and the mediation of internal conflict. She has published on peace processes in Central America and Colombia, as well as on the role played by informal groups of states, or “Friends” in the resolution of conflict. A journalist and filmmaker in her early career, Teresa’s publications include Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuría and the Murdered Jesuits of El Salvador (Temple University Press, 1994), written while living in El Salvador from 1990-1992, and, most recently, a chapter on Colombia co-authored with Cynthia J. Arnson in Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict (ed. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, United States Institute of Peace Press, 2005). She holds an MA in Latin American studies from the University of London and a BA in English literature from Cambridge University.

Patrick Johnston (discussant) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a CISAC predoctoral fellow. His dissertation, "Humanitarian Intervention and the Strategic Logic of Mass Atrocities in Civil Wars," asks why ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence frequently increase dramatically after international actors threaten to intervene militarily or deploy significant numbers of troops in coercive interventions. Johnston received a BA in history and a BA in political science, both with distinction, from the University of Minnesota, Morris and an MA in political science from Northwestern University.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Teresa Whitfield Director, Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum Speaker Social Science Research Council
Patrick Johnston Predoctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC


Speaker
Speaker
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David Holloway (speaker) 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. 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.

Michael May
(discussant) is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000. May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988.  He served as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971. May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards. His current research interests are in the area of nuclear and terrorism, energy, security and environment, and the relation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E214
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 723-1737 (650) 723-0089
0
Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies
Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
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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. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. 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.

Faculty member at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
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David Holloway Speaker
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Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
FSI Senior Fellow
CISAC Faculty Member
Not in Residence
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Michael May is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000.

May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971.

May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the International Institute on Strategic Studies, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards.

His current research interests are nuclear weapons policy in the US and in other countries; nuclear terrorism; nuclear and other forms of energy and their impact on the environment, health and safety and security; the use of statistics and mathematical models in the public sphere.

May is continuing work on creating a secure future for civilian nuclear applications. In October 2007, May hosted an international workshop on how the nuclear weapon states can help rebuild the consensus underlying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Proceedings and a summary report are available online or by email request. May also chaired a technical working group on nuclear forensics. The final report is available online.

In April 2007, May in cooperation with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Professor Ashton Carter of Harvard hosted a workshop on what would have to be done to be ready for a terrorist nuclear detonation. The report is available online at the Preventive Defense Project. A summary, titled, "The Day After: Action Following a Nuclear Blast in a U.S. City," was published fall 2007 in Washington Quarterly and is available online.

Recent work also includes a study of nuclear postures in several countries (2007 - 2009); an article on nuclear disarmament and one on tactical nuclear weapons; and a report with Kate Marvel for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on possible game changers in the nuclear energy industry.

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Michael May Speaker
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Charles Thorpe is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Previously he taught at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University in Wales, followed by time at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London. Dr. Thorpe received his PhD in Sociology and Science Studies from the University of California, San Diego in 2001. He is the author of Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect, published by University of Chicago Press in 2006.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Charles Thorpe Associate Professor of Sociology Speaker University of California, San Diego
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Frank Smith (speaker) is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Chicago and a predoctoral fellow at CISAC. His research examines military and civilian decisions about biological warfare and tests different theories about the sources of military research, development, and doctrine, as well as the rise of civilian biodefense. In addition, he has worked on a variety of projects that address technology and national security at the RAND Corporation, Argonne National Laboratory, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He earned his BS in biological chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2000.

Rebecca Slayton (discussant) 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.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Frank Smith Speaker
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Affiliate
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Slayton’s research and teaching examine the relationships between and among risk, governance, and expertise, with a focus on international security and cooperation since World War II. Slayton’s current book project, Shadowing Cybersecurity, examines the historical emergence of cybersecurity expertise. Shadowing Cybersecurity shows how efforts to establish credible expertise in corporate, governmental, and non-governmental contexts have produced varying and sometimes conflicting expert practices. Nonetheless, all cybersecurity experts wrestle with the irreducible uncertainties that characterize intelligent adversaries, and the fundamental inability to prove that systems are secure. The book shows how cybersecurity experts have paradoxically gained credibility by making threats and vulnerabilities visible, while acknowledging that more always remain in the shadows.

Slayton’s first book, Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012 (MIT Press, 2013), shows how the rise of a new field of expertise in computing reshaped public policies and perceptions about the risks of missile defense in the United States. In 2015, Arguments that Count won the Computer History Museum Prize. In 2016, Slayton was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER grant for her project “Enacting Cybersecurity Expertise.” In 2019, Slayton was also a recipient of the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, for her NSF CAREER project.

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Rebecca Slayton Speaker
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Dr. Chiozza investigates the popular basis of support for suicide terrorism carried out against Americans and other Western targets in Iraq. Using survey data from six countries in the Middle East and South Asia, he investigates how demographic factors, such as gender, education, and age, interact with specific predispositions and attitudes, including fear of the United States, anti-Semitism, and personal anomie, to explain who would consider suicide terrorism against American and Western targets in Iraq justifiable. Methodologically, he employs Classification and Regression Tree (CART) models, a novel methodology that allows for a parsimonious identification of interactive and non-linear effects in the data. Dr. Chiozza shows that fear of the U.S. trumps other motivations in the countries that are geographically closer to Iraq.

Giacomo Chiozza (speaker) is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Travers Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a PhD from Duke University and a BA from the Università degli Studi di Milano. Before joining the Berkeley Political Science department, he was a post-doctoral fellow in national security at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. His research interests include the study of foreign perceptions of the United States in the American World Order and the quantitative analysis of conflict processes. He is the author of "A Crisis like No Other? Anti-Americanism at the Time of the Iraq War" (European Journal of International Relations, forthcoming); "Disaggregating Anti-Americanism: An Analysis of Individual Attitudes Towards the United States" (In Keohane and Katzenstein, Anti-Americanisms in World Politics, 2007), as well as of articles on leaders and conflict processes that were published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Journal of Peace Research.

Aila Matanock (discussant) is a doctoral student in political science at Stanford.  She received an undergraduate degree magna cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard University, while working with the Belfer Center’s Managing the Atom Project and with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  After graduation, she took a job at the RAND Corporation as a research assistant where she analyzed projects on terrorism and nuclear weapons.  Her current research is on social support for terrorism, the effect of nuclear weapons on conventional conflict, and the reasons for varying levels of shared sovereignty in international agreements.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Giacomo Chiozza Assistant Professor of Political Science Speaker University of California, Berkeley
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Steven E. Miller is Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal, International Security and also co-editor of the International Security Program's book series, BCSIA Studies in International Security (which is published by the MIT Press). Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Miller is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he has been a member of their Committee on International Security Studies (CISS). He is also co-chair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee, a member of the Council of International Pugwash, a member of the Advisory Committee of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a member of the Scientific Committee of the Landau Network Centro Volta (Italy), and formerly a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).  Miller was born and raised in North Hollywood, California. He did his undergraduate degree at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He received a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) and a PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is married to Deborah K. Louis. They have two sons: Jonathan (1989) and Nicholas (1997).

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Steven E. Miller Editor-in-Chief Speaker <i>International Security</i>
Seminars
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Nuclear energy production today and in the near future will still be dominated by light-water reactors and therefore there will be a continued need for uranium enrichment. There is currently a focused attention on gas centrifuge enrichment. Gas centrifuge technology is much cheaper and efficient, but also poses a greater security concern, than the former gas diffusion technology.

In order to address the increased security concerns, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is planning and implementing strengthened safeguards procedures involving an increased reliance on continuous and remote monitoring technologies, and environmental sampling. The IAEA is also promoting multilateral enrichment centers as an additional avenue to enhance international security. Much of the current enrichment industry today already involves international partnerships such as between the US and European companies, or the tripartite agreement between Russia, China and the IAEA.

In order for safeguards and multilateral approaches to be viable and effective, they need to be accepted by industry, operators, states and the regulatory agencies. This talk will address how strengthened safeguards could be implemented while accommodating potentially conflicting interests such as: the protection of proprietary information, transparency in monitoring, applicability in multilateral arrangements, cost-effectiveness, and the ultimate goal of ensuring that enrichment activities remain peaceful.

Elena Rodriguez-Vieitez is a postdoctoral science fellow at CISAC, Stanford. Her research concerns proliferation risks associated with the global expansion of nuclear power. She received her PhD in nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation focused on nuclear physics experimental work conducted at cyclotron facilities at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Michigan State University, where she analyzed nuclear structure and fragmentation reaction data of neutron-rich unstable nuclei. As a nuclear engineering graduate student, she collaborated on a Department of Energy research project on radioactive waste transmutation in molten-salt reactors, where she modeled actinide transmutation efficiency and evaluated proliferation and environmental risks. As a graduate student, Rodriguez-Vieitez was also a research associate on public policy and nuclear threats at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Prior to her PhD studies, she was an intern at the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Radioactive Waste Management in Washington, DC.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Elena Rodriguez-Vieitez Speaker
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Abstract
We will present our observations from a visit to India’s nuclear facilities and several think tanks during March 2008. We will comment on India’s nuclear research programs, nuclear energy development, and the implications for the proposed U.S.-India nuclear deal and for scientific collaboration between our countries. We visited the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR) in Kalpakkam, the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in Trombay, had detailed discussions with the top leadership of the India Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and also visited several institutes in Bangalore and Chennai to discuss nuclear energy and nuclear nonproliferation.

Chaim Braun is a vice president of Altos Management Partners, Inc., and a CISAC science fellow and affiliate. He is a member of the Near-Term Deployment and the Economic Cross-Cut Working Groups of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV Roadmap study. He conducted several nuclear economics-related studies for the DOE Nuclear Energy Office, the Energy Information Administration, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Non-Proliferation Trust International, and others. Braun has 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. Braun has worked on a study of safeguarding the Agreed Framework in North Korea, he was the co-leader of a NATO Study of Terrorist Threats to Nuclear Power Plants, led CISAC's Summer Study on Terrorist Threats to Research Reactors, and most recently co-authored an article with former CISAC Co-Director Chris Chyba on nuclear proliferation rings.

Siegfried Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, a senior fellow at FSI, and co-director of CISAC. He is also an emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Hecker's research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapon policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counter terrorism), and cooperative nuclear threat reduction. Over the past 15 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. His current interests include the challenges of nuclear India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the nuclear aspirations of Iran. Hecker works closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and is actively involved with the U.S. National Academies, serving on the National Academy of Engineering Council and its International Programs Committee, as chair of the Committee on Counterterrorism Challenges for Russia and the United States, and as a member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control Nonproliferation Panel.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Chaim Braun CISAC Fellow and CISAC Affiliate Speaker

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-6468 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
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Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

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Siegfried S. Hecker Co-Director of CISAC and Professor (Research), Department of Management Science and Engineering; FSI Senior Fellow Speaker
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