Fellows and Associates, 2004–05

IGCC is pleased to announce the second group of fellows and associates for the National Science Foundation-funded Public Policy and Nuclear Threats (PPNT) program. For 2004–2005, the PPNT program has twelve fellows and six associates. This second group comprises current and incoming Ph.D. students from eight departments and six of the nine UC campuses. Both PPNT fellows and associates will come together this summer for a month-long seminar on both technical and policy issues surrounding nuclear threats and international security.

2004–05 IGERT Fellows
2003–04 IGERT Fellows

IGERT ASSOCIATES

Joseph P. Bassi, a native New Yorker and Yankees fan, is Ph.D. student in the Department of History at UC Santa Barbara. He is a consultant with the Aerospace Corporation supporting NASA/JPL and recently was a graduate research associate at Pacific Northwest National Lab where he worked nonproliferation issues at DOE/NNSA HQ.

A retired Air Force officer with twenty-six years of active duty, he at various points in his military career served as Director of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (Guam), Professor of Strategic Studies at a Department of Defense college, HQ Air Force Action Officer and Program Element Manager, Chief of the Acquisition Meteorology Office at Air Force Space Systems Division, and Assistant Professor of Physics at the USAF Academy. He has graduate degrees in Meteorology from Penn State, Astrophysics from the University of Colorado, and History from the George Washington University. While at GWU, he was a NASA Space Grant Research Fellow at the Space Policy Institute, Elliot School of International Affairs.

Bassi graduated from Manhattan College in 1974 with a B.S. in Physics (Phi Beta Kappa) and was a distinguished graduate of the Air Force ROTC program. His current interests include the role of technology in the Cold War, the history of National Labs and their role in arms control and nonproliferation, and U.S. space policy and history. He is married to Marianne Bassi, a nurse practitioner.

Beardsley was born and raised in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland, College Park. As an undergraduate, he pursued bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Government and Politics. While a student, he worked part-time as a crime analyst for the Washington/Baltimore High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area and as a research assistant for the Center for Substance Abuse Research. While crime mapping and drug policy continue to be topics of interest, Beardsley shifted his focus to international politics after brief study abroad opportunities in Cuba, Prague, and Budapest.

Datta earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from UC Berkeley in 1994, after which he spent three years teaching English in Japan and South Korea. During this time, he made several interesting treks throughout India and Thailand. In 2002 he completed a master's degree in public policy from Georgetown University. In 2005, he interned for the American Embassy in the Netherlands, working for its division of political affairs.

After obtaining his Ph.D. in political science, Datta plans to pursue a career straddling academia and the policy world.

Juan Escobar was born in Mexico City in 1976. After high school he debated between economy, literature, and physics as a career. He decided on physics because he was told it would give him the most future options. He obtained his bachelor's degree in UNAM, Mexico, and had the chance to study abroad at UC Santa Cruz for six months.

Escobar worked on granular materials and taught high school physics for a year before starting the Ph.D. program in physics at UCLA in 2000 as a Fulbright fellow. At UCLA, he is working on fracture dynamics and hysteresis at the nanometer scale. His interests include energy focusing phenomena, collective behavior, and the microscopic roots of irreversibility.

Jonathan D. Hagood is a Ph.D. student in History at the University of California, Davis. The primary focus of his research is the history of science, medicine, and technology policy in the twentieth century. His work includes research in Latin American science and technology, the role of the United States and Europe in science on the periphery, and the history of global nuclear proliferation.

Hagood's public policy interests include nuclear weapons and defense strategies, science and technology issues, and foreign policy. He has a B.Architecture and a B.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to entering the Ph.D. program at UC Davis, Jonathan was a partner in an information technology consulting firm in San Francisco, California.

Justin Hastings is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in Political Science at UC Berkeley. His research interests primarily center around both traditional military and non-traditional security issues in China and Southeast Asia. Hastings’ dissertation deals with the political geography of clandestine transnational networks in Southeast Asia, including terrorist groups, insurgents, smugglers, and maritime pirates, and is based on eleven months of fieldwork in the region. In terms of nuclear issues, he is interested in nuclear weapons doctrine, East Asian nuclear issues, and applying the concepts of non-traditional security to countering nuclear proliferation.

After graduating from Princeton University, Hastings lived for a year in Japan, working as a Princeton-in-Asia intern at a pharmaceutical company in Tokyo. He has been affiliated with the Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, and has worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Institute for Defense Analyses, and the Department of Defense.

Johnsen grew up in an army family, moving frequently, and her interest in international relations began while her family was living at SHAPE, a NATO base in Belgium, at the end of the Cold War. More recently, her interests are in U.S. national security policy, including nuclear nonproliferation and security.

Before entering UC Berkeley, Johnsen received a B.S. in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has interned at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on a nuclear fuel development project and at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, a research lab that designs nuclear reactors for the U.S. Navy.

Kim spent the last year at the International Atomic Energy Agency as a U.S. Support Program Fellow in the Non-Destructive Assay Systems unit with the Department of Safeguards. Prior to the IAEA, he worked in probabilistic risk analysis and advanced reactor nuclear analysis at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Kim received his B.S. from UC Berkeley with a double major in Nuclear and Mechanical Engineering. He also has experience in heavy ion fusion research and energy analysis. His hobbies include classical guitar, scuba diving, cycling, skiing, and traveling.

Jamus Lim is an assistant professor at Centre College, Kentucky. He was educated at the University of California, the London School of Economics, and the University of Southern Queensland, where he obtained his doctorate, masters, and honors degrees in economics, respectively. He has also worked in both the public sector, having spent time as a research associate at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, as well as the private sector, as an analyst at the former J. P. Morgan.

Lim’s areas of research expertise (and interest) lie at the intersection of international economics and political economy, although he has also worked on various aspects of global political economy, international development, and information and communications technology. He has published more than a dozen academic articles in both refereed journals and conference volumes, together with a host of op-ed articles for the general public. When not holed up in the office, Lim can often be found in the gym, behind the drums, or in the cellar (in reverse order).

After finishing his military service safeguarding nuclear artillery shells, Kai studied psychology and economics in Germany, France, Belgium, and the United States. A scholar of the German National Academic Foundation, Pommerenke graduated with distinction from the University of Cologne before pursuing a master's degree at the London School of Economics. He also worked as a management consultant in the United Kingdom, mostly in the energy and financial services industries. In his free time Pommerenke enjoys reading and playing beach volleyball.

Lisa Saum is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at UCLA. Her dissertation focuses on national security reform issues, specifically those that involve the intelligence community and the interest groups that gain access to the security policymaking process. She recently worked as a summer associate at the RAND Corporation, where she researched and wrote analytical briefs on the utility of nuclear deterrence toward rogue states and terrorist organizations. She is also interested in and currently training in the field of international mediation and conflict resolution.

Shah's academic interests include applied mathematics, computational physics, and science policy. On those occasions spent away from a computer or laboratory, he enjoys kayaking, running, and traveling.

Jonathan Snider is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at UC Davis. His research interests include the legalization of global politics, international relations theory, and nuclear security. Currently, he is working on several projects relating to legal issues surrounding the nuclear nonproliferation regime at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Previously, Snider was a research assistant at the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC). Research conducted at JNC covered a broad spectrum of nuclear energy issues including proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors, reprocessing, nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear waste management. He has also worked as a legal assistant in Washington, D.C., focusing on U.S. export controls of dual-use technology and international boundary disputes.

Snider received his master’s degree from the University of Virginia and his bachelor’s degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
University.

Dane Swango is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. As an undergraduate he majored in economics and physics at Duke University. After graduating summa cum laude in 2001, he accepted a Fulbright fellowship to live and work in rural South Korea. Upon completing his grant activities he returned to the United States and worked in public policy research at a Washington, D.C., think tank. He has also worked for Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Department of Defense.

Swango is interested in international security theory, technology, and U.S. national security. He is particularly attracted to the impact of technical change on national security. His work has covered the effects of environmental sampling on proliferation policy, and the interaction between proliferator beliefs and the monitoring technology. His dissertation examines the causes and consequences of different monitoring and verification choices in arms control regimes. He is also interested in the international relations of East Asia and U.S. security policy in the region.

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