Past sgs visitors, Staff and Students Ali Ahmad

Past SGS Visitors, Staff and Students
Ali Ahmad was a post-doctoral researcher with the Program on Science and Global Security and Princeton University’s Nuclear Futures Laboratory from the fall of 2013 through the end of 2015. His work was supported by the Woodrow Wilson School’s Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy. It focusses on nuclear technology assessment of small modular reactors and on nuclear energy policy in the Middle East. Prior to joining Princeton, Ali was a research associate in applied nuclear physics at the Rutherford-Appleton Lab (UK). A physics graduate from the Lebanese University in Beirut, Ali holds a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from Cambridge University.

Laura Berzak Hopkins received her Ph.D. in Plasma Physics from Princeton University in 2010.  From 2010-2011, she held an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellowship, where she served as a scientific advisor for U.S. Senator Kent Conrad and on the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. Her Congressional portfolios included issues ranging from alternative energy technology to nuclear nonproliferation and arms control. During her graduate studies, Laura was a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Stewardship Science Graduate Fellow at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Oleg Bukharin (Research Scientist) came to Princeton as a fresh PhD in physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in September 1990 to take courses related to arms control, nonproliferation and international security. He returned to MIPT's Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies in August 1991 and served as Acting Director while Anatoli Diakov was visiting Princeton. During 1992-1994, Bukharin was an SSRC/MacArthur Foundation Peace and Security Fellow in Princeton and Moscow. He joined Princeton's research staff in July 1995 and was promoted to Research Scientist in 2000.

Dongli Chen (Visiting Fellow) is the Director of Beijing Science, Technology, and Security Advisory Center. He joined the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association as the Director of Biological Security Program during 2007-2008. Before that, he served at Institute of Biotechnology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences in China. Visited SGS fall 2010 through March 2011.

Bernadette Kafwimbi Cogswell (Postdoctoral Research Associate) joined the Program in mid-Fall 2014. Her work examines nuclear reactor and nuclear fuel cycle safeguards, including an assessment of the viability of antineutrino monitoring as a safeguards tool, the technical challenges for arms control verification and the feasibility of nuclear energy for developing nations. She has a PhD in theoretical particle physics from Vanderbilt University, where her research focused on neutrino oscillation phenomenology.

Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress (Research Fellow) holds an MSc and PhD in high-energy physics from Carleton University, Canada, specializing in ultra-low background detectors. He worked in several international collaborations and has contributed to many articles in high energy and nuclear physics. He joined SGS in the summer of 2008 to work on verification methods and novel detection schemes for determining the declared inventory of naval reactor cores by simulating the effectiveness of detector systems. In March 2009, he accepted a position at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.

Malte Göttsche (Postdoctoral Research Associate) joined the Program on Science and Global Security in October 2015 as a post-doctoral researcher and a fellow of the Consortium for Verification Technology. He is interested in technical and policy issues of verifying future nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements. At Princeton, he is working on warhead authentication based on nuclear measurements and overarching verification concepts and schemes. Malte holds a doctoral degree in physics from the University of Hamburg, where he worked as a research assistant at the Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker-Centre for Science and Peace Research from 2012 until 2015. Earlier, he had been a visiting scholar at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Malte is affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Disarmament, Arms Control and Risk Technologies of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy in Hamburg.

Mark Gubrud (Postdoctoral Research Associate) was with the Program on Science and Global Security from October 2012 through September 2013. Mark previously taught physics at the University of North Carolina, and received his PhD in experimental physics from the University of Maryland in December 2010. He has long been an engaged commentator on space, high technology and robotic weapons issues, and is a member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control.

Anfeng Guo (Visiting Fellow) is the Chief Scientist in Beijing Science, Technology, and Security Advisory Center, and Council Member of China Arms Control and Disarmament Association. Guo started her research on biodefense at the Institute of Biotechnology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences in China in 1988. Since 1991, she gradually engaged in policy research on national biodefense strategies and bio-arms control policies, including mechanisms and measures to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention and the impact of scientific and technological advances on biological weapons. During the period of the BWC Protocol negotiation, she participated in BWC meetings in Geneva for 12 times as a biological expert on the Governmental Expert Panel of China. She received her B.S. in Public Health from Peking University and M.D. in Military Preventive Medicine from Academy of Military Medical Sciences. Visited SGS fall 2010 through March 2011.

Joshua Handler (PhD graduate in the Woodrow Wilson School) joined our group in September 1996. Prior to that he had been most recently Director of Greenpeace International's campaign for the Comprehensive Test Ban. His thesis research examined the bureaucratic and political obstacles within the U.S. and Russian governments that prevented greater progress on nuclear disarmament between 1990 and 1994. Joshua completed his thesis during the fall of 2002 and left us to pursue a career in Washington DC as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow.

Pervez Hoodbhoy (Consultant) retired in 2010 as Chair of the Department of Physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. In 2003, Hoodbhoy was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science. He is a long-time collaborator with Mian and Nayyar in an effort to educate the Pakistani public on the dangers of nuclear weapons.  In 2001, with support from the Center for Defense Information, Hoodbhoy and Mian completed the documentary film, Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow, which Hoodbhoy directed and narrated.  In 2004, with MacArthur Foundation support, they completed a second film, Crossing the Lines: Kashmir, India, Pakistan on the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, the most likely flashpoint for a South Asian nuclear war., In 2010, he was awarded jointly with Abdul Nayyar the American Physical Society’s Joseph Burton Award “for broadening the public understanding of science in Pakistan and for informing the public of the dangers of the nuclear arms race in South Asia.” Pervez is a frequent visitor to SGS.

Jungmin Kang (Consultant) joined our group in the summer of 1998 as a Visiting Student. His work with us resulted in him being awarded a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from Tokyo University in July 1999. While with PS&GS, Kang completed articles on South Korea's options for storage of its spent nuclear fuel and examined a once-through uranium-thorium fuel cycle as an alternative to plutonium recycle. He also co-authored with us a history of South Korea's nuclear and weapons programs and analyzed the feasibility of disposing of plutonium in "storage MOX" and converting Russian ice-breaker reactors from weapon-grade to low-enriched uranium. Kang returned to South Korea in January 2001 and is now based at Seoul National University. The Ploughshares Fund has supported his work on South Korean fuel-cycle and technical issues relating to possible cooperative approaches to getting an agreement with North Korea to shut down its nuclear program. He has also received support from Margaret Spanel.

Tadahiro Katsuta (Visiting Fellow) most recently spent a year beginning April, 20015 with the Program. He also spent the 2007-2008 academic year at the Program on the prestigious Abe Fellowship, supported by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership and the Social Science Research Council. He is currently researching Japan’s spent fuel management problems as well as studying the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident and is following the new regulation standard focusing on the technical and political aspects. Katsuta is an official member of the study team for the New Regulatory Requirements for Commercial Nuclear Power Reactors, and for Nuclear Fuel Facilities, Research Reactors, and Nuclear Waste Storage/Disposal Facilities by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). From 2008-2009, he conducted research on multilateral nuclear fuel cycle systems as a Visiting Fellow at PSGS. From 2006-2008, he conducted research on the separated plutonium problem caused by Rokkasho reprocessing plant at the University of Tokyo. From 1999-2005 he worked at Citizens Nuclear Information Center (CNIC) in Tokyo as a researcher.
Moritz Kütt is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Program on Science and Global Security. He received his PhD from the Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany in 2016, from where he also holds a master’s degree in physics and undergraduate degrees in physics and in political science. His research focuses on the role of information, nuclear measurements, sensors and methods and citizen participation in disarmament and non-proliferation verification.

Kenneth Luongo (Visiting Research Collaborator) was Director of the Department of Energy's Office of Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and Nonproliferation Advisor to the Secretary of Energy during 1994-1997. He also supervised the development of the U.S.-Russian collaborative program to strengthen nuclear material security in the former Soviet Union. He is currently the Executive Director of the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, which has offices in Washington and Moscow.

Gordon MacKerron (Visiting Senior Research Scholar) was with the Program from March to the end of June 2014, working on a MacArthur-funded project on nuclear fuel reprocessing, as well as the development of management strategies for separated civilian plutonium. He was until December 2013 the Director of SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research) University of Sussex and retuned there as Professor of Science and Technology Policy. He was previously Chair of the UK Government’s independent Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM: 2003-2007), which formulated current UK policy on radioactive waste management.

Caroline R. Milne was with the SGS program from 2010 to 2017, while she completed her doctoral studies at the Woodrow Wilson School under the guidance of Christopher Chyba. Caroline wrote her dissertation on how nuclear-armed adversaries understand and address conditions of mutual vulnerability. She has a B.S. in aerospace engineering from MIT and an M.A. from the War Studies Department at King’s College London. Caroline spent the 2014-2015 academic year as a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the RAND Corporation, where she specialized in U.S. and Chinese perceptions of mutual nuclear vulnerability and strategic stability. As of 2018, she is a Research Staff Member at the Institute for Defense Analyses.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian (Visiting Research Scholar) is a former diplomat who served as Ambassador to Germany (1990-1997), head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Iran’s National Security Council (1997-2005) and as Iran’s nuclear negotiator (2003-5). He has taught at Islamic Azad University and was Vice President of Iran’s Center for Strategic Research, He has a PhD (2002) in International Relations from the University of Kent, UK and is currently doing research on Iran’s nuclear diplomacy.

Abdul Nayyar (Summer Visiting Senior Research Scholar) is Executive Director of the Ali Institute for Education, Lahore, Pakistan. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, leading their programs on security and energy issues, and on reforming the curriculum and textbooks used in Pakistan’s public schools. He retired in 2005 from the Department of Physics at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. He has been a regular summer visitor with the South Asia Project since 1998. In 2010, he was awarded jointly with Pervez Hoodbhoy the 2010 American Physical Society’s Joseph Burton Award “for broadening the public understanding of science in Pakistan and for informing the public of the dangers of the nuclear arms race in South Asia.” Nayyar is a frequent visitor to SGS.

Robert Nelson (Research Staff) received his PhD in Astrophysics from Cornell University in 1991. For three years, starting in 1998, he was a Council of Science and Technology Teaching Fellow in Princeton University's Department of Astrophysics. In June 2000 he joined our group. Since September 2002 we have shared him with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, where he is working with Richard Garwin.

Ali Nouri (Associate Research Staff) worked on issues related to biological security. He is currently an AAAS Congressional Fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-Va). Prior to joining the program, Nouri was engaged with biotechnology-related activities at the United Nations Office of the Secretary-General.  He holds a BA in biology from Reed College and a PhD in molecular biology from Princeton University, where he studied the role of various tumor suppressor genes during animal development. Prior to Princeton, he was a research assistant at the Oregon Health Sciences University where he studied the molecular basis of retroviral entry into cells. 

Tamara Patton is a current (2016) PhD student in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Her research centers on verification options for future nuclear arms control and disarmament measures, including working with virtual reality environments to design and simulate possible systems for verifying warhead and fissile material reductions. Previously, she worked as a researcher at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation where she focused on emerging technologies for nuclear verification, including in the areas of visualization, virtual reality, and geospatial analysis. She has an MA in nonproliferation studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a BA in international studies from the University of Washington. 

Benoit Pelopidas (Visiting Fellow) [e-mail] is a political scientist and professor in security studies at the Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po in Paris, France. He formerly taught international relations at the University of Bristol. Since September 2015, he has been a visiting fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, working with their global systemic risk research community. His work focuses on the construction of knowledge about nuclear weapons, their past and their future and its ethical and political implications. 

Sébastien Philippe (Ph.D. candidate MAE) joined Princeton University in July 2012 as a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering within the Nuclear Futures Laboratory. Prior to coming to Princeton, Sébastien worked for two years within the French Ministry of Defense: first as a graduate research fellow within the Strategic Research Institute of the French Military Academy in Paris (IRSEM); and then for 18 months in the defense procurement agency (DGA) as an engineer responsible for implementing and maintaining military nuclear safety regulations in the French oceanic strategic force. He received a master’s degree in Mechanical and Design Engineering from the French National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA, Lyon) in 2010 and a B.A.I. from Trinity College Dublin in 2009 as part of a joint European degree program. 

R. Rajaraman (Summer Visiting Senior Research Scholar) is Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He is a Vice President of the Indian National Science Academy and co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. He has been contributing articles to India’s nuclear weapon debate since 1970 and has been a regular summer visitor with Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security since 2000. Rajaraman is a frequent visitor to SGS.

M. V. Ramana (Professional Specialist & Associate Research Scholar) received his Ph.D. in Physics from Boston University. He joined SGS in 1998 and was here till 2016, except between 2004 and 2009 when he was at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development. Since 2017, he has been Professor and the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, Canada. Ramana is the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India, Penguin Books, New Delhi (2012).  His work has been recognized through honors such as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and the Leo Szilard Award from the American Physical Society in 2014. He is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials.
Ben Reimold is a Master’s student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and joined the Program on Global Security and the Nuclear Futures Laboratory team in 2015. His research focuses on technical approaches for verification challenges in arms control, including most recently a project on verifying numerical limits on treaty accountable items. Also interested in non-Western perspectives on issues of security and identity, Ben earned his MA in International Relations from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey in 2014.  His master’s thesis investigated the linkages between pursuit of nuclear weapons and the national identity conceptions of decision-makers in India and Brazil.  Ben holds a B.S. in nuclear engineering from Penn State University, and speaks Turkish.

Michael Schoeppner (Postdoctoral Research Associate/Visiting Research Collaborator) joined the Program on Science and Global Security fall 2014. His research focuses on atmospheric transport modelling of radioactive noble gases for the verification of nuclear arms control treaties. Michael has Master’s degrees from the University of Muenster (Germany) and the University of Hamburg (Germany), and a PhD from the Roma Tre University (Italy). Before joining the Program he was working as a consultant for the Preparatory Commission of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) in Vienna (Austria) where he returned in June, 2016. While he is at the CTBTO he remains affiliated with SGS as a Visiting Research Collaborator.

Ryan A. Snyder (Postdoctoral Research Associate) joined the Program on Science and Global Security in August 2014 for two years. Ryan worked on technical and policy questions related to the proliferation risk from the use of laser isotope separation for uranium enrichment and on improving international safeguards on the nuclear fuel cycle, and the future of nuclear power. He was previously a Fellow for Energy Studies at the Federation of American Scientists and an adjunct lecturer in physics at American University, both in Washington D.C. In graduate school he worked at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility as part of a collaboration that used parity-violating electron scattering to measure the strange-quark contribution to the structure of the nucleon. He received a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in physics from Kenyon College. 

Scott Steele (Research Associate) joined PS&GS in February 2003 after he finished his molecular biology PhD thesis. He left at the beginning of July 2003 to join the FBI to work on interagency policy coordination in the area of prevention of bioterrorism. During his 4.5 months with PS&GS, he wrote a paper on the national need for high-containment laboratories to study countermeasures to pathogens that might be used by terrorists. He also organized the 2003-2004 Princeton workshop and seminar series on biodefense R&D.

Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin joined the SGS Nuclear Futures Laboratory in 2014 as a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He aims to work on the proliferation resistance feature of new concepts of nuclear reactors. Julien is also particularly interested in the issues surrounding civil and military fuel cycle in the far-east. Before joining Princeton, Julien received a Master degree in 2014 from the University of Tsinghua, Beijing, in the field of nuclear engineering. In his thesis work, Julien developed innovative ways to solve the time dependent depletion equation with mathematics methods borrowed from quantum physics. The same year, he also graduated from the French Engineering School Centrale Marseille (equivalent of a Master degree).

Mark Walker is a PhD candidate in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. For the last three years, he has been involved with research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on verification technology for nuclear arms control treaties, with a specific focus on active neutron interrogation techniques. In the summer of 2010, he was also an intern at the U.S. Office of Naval Reactors. He is a 2011 recipient of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, and earned his bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2012.

Ting Wang joined SGS in 2013 as a post-doctoral researcher for 2 years. While at SGS he worked on space debris problems, missile defense and anti-satellite weapons. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University and at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He was a visiting scholar at the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2003, where he began to be interested in security issues. He received a Ph.D. at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China and has worked at the Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering.

Sharon Weiner (Research Staff) received a PhD in Security Studies from M.I.T in 1998 after working as a staffer for the House Armed Services Committee in the late 1980’s. She joined our group in June 1999. She has been working full time on activities associated with the conversion of excess weapons workers in Russia's closed nuclear cities. Weiner is currently supported in large part by a two-year Carnegie Corporation Scholars Program fellowship (September 1, 2001-August 31, 2003) to write articles and a book assessing the U.S. and international programs established to help stabilize and downsize Russia's nuclear-weapons complex.

Houston Wood (Visiting Research Scholar) is Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Virginia. He worked on the U.S. Department of Energy’s gas centrifuge development program from 1967 until 1985, when the program was terminated. Over the last 15 years, he has been active in teaching, lecturing and consulting on issues relating to nuclear non-proliferation.

Jie Yan (Postdoctoral Research Associate) joined SGS in June 2014 for 1 ½ years. While here he worked on using the zero-knowledge approach to arms control inspection and verification problems. Prior to joining Princeton, he was an associate professor at the Institute of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry, China Academy of Engineering Physics. His work was focused on neutronics physics and their applications to military and homeland security. He received a Ph.D in Particle and Nuclear Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China.

Fumihiko Yoshida (Visiting Lecturer) writes the editorials on nuclear-weapon policy, climate change and other global issues for the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's leading national newspapers. From 1980-2000, Yoshida was a journalist with the Asahi Shimbun specializing on nuclear and security issues, including three years each on assignment in the newspaper's Washington and Brussels bureaus. He has a PhD in International Public Policy from Osaka University and has written four books, including three on nuclear security policy. He served on an advisory committee on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation policy to Japan's Foreign Minister. During the fall semester of 2010, he co-led with von Hippel a Woodrow Wilson School graduate policy workshop on "Plutonium, Proliferation and Radioactive Waste Politics in East Asia." Yoshida visited SGS during the fall 2010 term.