Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley — Biodefense, Political Science, WMD proliferation
Marie Chevrier — Arms Control Policy, Negotiations and Implementation, History – View Publications – michevrier@gmail.com
Nancy Connell — Biosecurity, Biosafety, Biodefense
Stefano Costanzi — Biochemistry, Countering WMD, Countering Chemical Weapons — View Publications — costanzi@american.edu
Nicholas G. Evans — Ethics of Emerging Technologies, Ethics in Public Health
Martin Furmanski — History, Biosecurity – View Publications – martinfurmanski@aol.com
John Gilbert — NBC Weapons Inspections and Training – jag1687@aol.com
Martin Hugh-Jones — Epidemiology, Public Health – View Publications – mhughj1@lsu.edu
Lynn Klotz — Industrial Biotechnology, Biosecurity – View Publications – lynnklotz@live.com
Gregory Koblentz — CBW Non-proliferation, Biodefense, Dual-Use Research – View Publications – gkoblentz@gmu.edu
Margaret E. Kosal — Reducing WMD Threats, Geopolitics of Emerging Technologies — margaret.kosal@inta.gatech.edu
Saskia Popescu — Healthcare Biopreparedness, Global Health Security
Kathleen Vogel — Biosecurity/Science Technology and Society/Data Science/Intelligence – View Publications – kathleen.vogel@asu.edu
Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley
Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley is an Associate Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. She holds affiliations with GMU’s Biodefense Program, Center for Global Studies, and the Department of History and Art History’s Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) program.
She received her PhD in Development Economics from the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris; a graduate degree in Strategy and Defense Policy from the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Paris; a master’s degree in Applied Foreign Languages (triple major in economics, law, and foreign languages—Russian, and English) from the University of Paris X-Nanterre, and a dual undergraduate degree in Applied Foreign Languages and English Literature from the University of Paris X-Nanterre. She is fluent in French, English, Russian, and spoken Arabic, and possesses beginner competence in Kazakh.
Prior to joining the GMU faculty in 2008, Professor Ben Ouagrham-Gormley was a Senior Research Associate with the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS). While at CNS, she spent two years at the CNS Almaty office in Kazakhstan, where she served as Director of Research. She also was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Export Control Observer, a monthly publication focusing on proliferation developments and export controls around the globe. From 2004 to 2008, she was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Professor Ben Ouagrham-Gormley has conducted research and written on such topics as nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons proliferation, organization and management of weapons programs, WMD trafficking in states of the former Soviet Union, biosecurity and bioterrorism, bio-dissuasion, export controls, defense industry conversion, transfer mechanisms of WMD expertise, and redirection of WMD experts. She has received several grants from the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy, as well as from the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Carnegie Corporation of New York to conduct research on WMD proliferation and contribute to remediation programs such as the DOD-funded Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.
Marie Chevrier
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Marie Chevrier (PhD) is Professor of Public Policy and Chair of the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers University-Camden. Dr. Chevrier’s research focuses on analysis of the arms control negotiations and implementation, in particular the negotiations to control chemical and biological weapons. Dr. Chevrier was chair of the BioWeapons Prevention Project, a Geneva based civil society network from 2008-2011. She is an active member of the Pugwash Study Group on the Implementation of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions. She has been designated an expert on security and disarmament matters by The Weapons of Mass Destruction Branch of the United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA) and an expert by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Dr. Chevrier was the former associate director of the Harvard Sussex Program on Chemical and Biological Armaments and Arms Limitation at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and has been on the faculty of two NATO Advanced Study Institutes on biological weapons control. Dr. Chevrier received her Master’s and Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University.
Nancy Connell
Dr. Connell is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a microbial geneticist by training. Dr. Connell’s work at the Center is focused on advances in life sciences and technology and their application to a number of developments in the areas of biosecurity, biosafety, and biodefense. Her research projects analyze novel biotechnologies that might have an impact in several areas, such as the implementation of Biological Weapons Convention and the development of global catastrophic biological risks in ecosystems. She recently completed a study of the development of surge capacity for medical countermeasure manufacturing and other response mechanisms in the event of global pandemics or global catastrophic events. She is an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security.
Dr. Connell is a member of the Board on Life Sciences, a member of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control, and a National Associate of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), where she has served on more than 15 NASEM committees. Dr. Connell is a member of the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response Biological Agent Containment Working Group. She has had a long-standing interest in the development of regulatory policies associated with biocontainment work and dual-use research of concern. In addition to biomedical research policy, Dr. Connell has considerable experience and interest in pedagogy, with a focus on ethics education and the responsible conduct of research. She has presented at workshops and meetings around the world on the interrelated issues of biocontainment, infectious disease research, research ethics, and the impact of advancing science and technology on the implementation of the Biological Weapons Convention.
From 1992-2018, Dr. Connell was at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) and the Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences, finishing her long career there as Professor and Director of Research in the Division of Infectious Disease in the Department of Medicine. Her major research focus was antibacterial drug discovery in respiratory pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Bacillus anthracis. Beginning in 1997, Dr. Connell chaired the Institutional Biosafety Committee of Rutgers University and directed the NJMS biosafety level three containment laboratory. Her most recent work focused on the use of predatory bacteria as novel therapeutics for treatment of Gram-negative bacterial infections, including multidrug-resistant strains and select agents. Dr. Connell was continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, industry, and other sources from 1992 to 2018. She received a PhD in microbial genetics from Harvard University.
Stefano Costanzi
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Dr. Stefano Costanzi is a Professor of Chemistry at American University, inWashington D.C., with an educational background in both the chemical sciences and international affairs. Specifically, he holds a Laurea degree in Chemistry and a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Camerino as well as a Master of International Service degree from American University’s School of International Service.
Dr. Costanzi’s teaching interests focus on two areas: biochemistry and the countering of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), chiefly chemical weapons. The courses are offered to both science and non-science majors. Depending on the targeted audience, they combine to different degrees science, history, and arms control policy.
His scholarly work is based on two main research lines. The first one revolves around the application and development of computational chemistry strategies to study the interactions between chemicals and living organisms. The second one revolves around the analysis of gaps in current policies and practices that allow the proliferation of chemical weapons and the conceptualization of solutions and tools to narrow them. Additionally, he is interested in raising awareness on CBRN issues.
Nicholas G. Evans
Dr. Nicholas G. Evans is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and a 2020-2023 Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholar. He conducts research on the ethics of emerging technologies, with a focus on national security issues. He is best known for his research on “dual-use research” in the life sciences. His first sole-authored book, The Ethics Neuroscience and National Security, will be published by Routledge in 2021.
In addition to his work on emerging technologies, Dr. Evans is a recognized expert in public health ethics. His 2016 collection, Ebola’s Message: Public Health and Medicine in the 21st Century, received favorable reviews in Nature. In late 2021 he will publish a new, sole-authored work on pandemic preparedness with The MIT Press titled, War onAll Fronts: A Theory of Just Health Security.
Prior to his appointment at the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Evans completed postdoctoral work in medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, he held an Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative Fellowship at the UPMC Center for Health Security, Baltimore. Dr. Evans has conducted research at the Monash Bioethics Centre, Australian Defence Force Academy, University of Exeter, and University of Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. He has also served as a policy officer with the Australian Department of Health and Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Lynn Klotz
Lynn Klotz, PhD., is a Senior Science Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. He also is Co-managing Director of Bridging BioScience and BioBusiness LLC, a biotechnology education business. Dr. Klotz is a former Harvard University faculty member and biotechnology company executive.
While at Harvard University, he was a recipient of the prestigious Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar grant for teaching excellence. He was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize along with co-author Edward Sylvester, by the publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons, for the 1983 book The Gene Age: Genetic Engineering and the Next Industrial Revolution. In 2009, the University of Chicago Press published a second Klotz and Sylvester book, Breeding Bio Insecurity: How U.S. Biodefense is Exporting Fear, Globalizing Risk, and Making Us All Less Secure. The UC Press featured it in the Atlantic magazine section “The Best Books of 2009” as one of its six best books. In 2016, his third book, Beyond the Science: The Business of Drug Development, was published online by BioPharma Dive, a subsidiary of Industry Dive, Inc.
Martin Furmanski
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Martin Furmanski (MD) is a physician with an interest in the medical aspects and laboratory evaluation of chemical and biological weapons. His interests in contemporary arms control include the medical limitations of non-lethal chemical agents and the application of the historical experience of national chemical and biological weapons programs to the technical evaluation of present chemical and biological threats. He has done field investigations of survivors of WWII CW and BW attacks in China with Sheldon H Harris, and compiled substantial documentation on the technical development of the Japanese and US, British and Canadian BW programs from the 1940s to 1960s. He has contributed to several historical treatments of chemical and biological weapons developments for this period. Dr. Furmanski received his undergraduate training in Medical Microbiology at Stanford University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and his medical training at UCLA, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha. He is board certified in Anatomic Pathology and Clinical Pathology (Medical Microbiology, Toxicology, and general Laboratory Medicine).
John Gilbert
John Gilbert is a Senior Science Fellow with the Center and was a senior arms control analyst with a large professional and technical services company where he has supported a variety of national and international chemical, biological, and nuclear material control, non-proliferation, and counter-terrorism initiatives. He has specialized in on-site inspection operations and management. Previously, Mr. Gilbert served as a senior officer in the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a Colonel after more than 25 years. He served on and commanded strategic missile crews, spent over 15 years managing organizations that analyzed foreign WMD capabilities and delivery systems, and was one of the first-ever U.S. on-site inspectors (under the INF Treaty) beginning in 1988. He established the chemical and biological operations division within the U.S. On-Site Inspection Agency (now part of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency), and was a member of U.S. national Chemical Weapons delegations and negotiating teams in Geneva, The Hague, and Moscow. He has trained several hundred arms control inspectors for the United States, including those conducting missile, nuclear, and chemical inspections, biological weapon fact-finding visits, and other operations. Many of the people he trained served with distinction on UNSCOM and UNMOVIC (successor to UNSCOM) teams.
Gregory Koblentz
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Gregory D. Koblentz is an Associate Professor and Director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. The Biodefense Graduate Program is a multidisciplinary research and education program designed to prepare students to work on issues at the nexus of health, science, and security and bridge the gap between science and policy. He also directs the Virtual Summer Workshop on Pandemics and Global Health Security at the Schar School. Dr. Koblentz is an Associate Faculty at the Center for Security Policy Studies at George Mason and a member of the Scientist Working Group on Biological and Chemical Security at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC. In 2016, he briefed the United Nations Security Council on the impact of emerging technologies on the threat posed by non-state actors armed with weapons of mass destruction. He serves as a pro bono advisor for the Open Society Justice Initiative and DARPA, as a consultant for the Stimson Center on their cheminformatics program, and is a member of the Biothreat Advisory Board of Heat Biologics.
Prior to arriving at George Mason, Dr. Koblentz was a visiting assistant professor in the School of Foreign Service and Department of Government at Georgetown University. He has also worked for the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr. Koblentz is the author of Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age (Council on Foreign Relations, 2014) and Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security (Cornell University Press, 2009) and co-author of Mapping Maximum Biological Containment Labs Globally (London: King’s College London, May 2021), Editing Biosecurity: Needs and Strategies for Governing Genome Editing (George Mason University and Stanford University, 2018), and Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1998). His research and teaching focus on understanding the causes and consequences of the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons to state and non-state actors and the impact of emerging technologies on international security. He has published widely on issues related to biodefense, dual-use research, and the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. He received a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Margaret E. Kosal
Dr. Margaret E. Kosal is Associate Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology, where she is the Director of the Sam Nunn Security Program and the Program on Emerging Technology and Security. She holds appointments as affiliated faculty in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and the Georgia Tech Institute for Robotics and Intelligence Machines (IRIM) at Georgia Tech. Her research explores the relationships among technology, strategy, and governance. She focuses on two, often intersecting, areas: reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and understanding the geopolitics of emerging technologies.
Kosal is the author of Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense, which explores scenarios, benefits, and potential proliferation threats of nanotechnology and other emerging sciences; editor of the volume, Technology and the Intelligence Community: Challenges and Advances for the 21st Century, and editor and contributor to the volumes Disruptive and Game Changing Technologies in Modern Warfare: Development, Use, and Proliferation. Formally trained as an experimental scientist, Kosal earned a doctoral degree in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) working on biomimetic and nano-structured functional materials. She is also the co-founder of a sensor company, where she led research and development of medical, biological, chemical sensors and explosives detection. During AY 2016-2017, she served as a Senior Adjunct Scholar to the Modern War Institute at West Point. Kosal previously has served as a Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the U.S.Army, as Science and Technology Advisor within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), and as an Associate to the National Intelligence Council (NIC). She is the recipient of multiple awards including the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence and most recently honored as Georgia Power Professor of Excellence. In January 2017, she was appointed the Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge University Press journal, Politics and the Life Sciences.
Professional speaking highlights include being invited to speak on “The Future of Warfare,” at Seoul Defense Dialogue in 2017, which is Deputy Defense Secretary-level meeting + Track 1.5 meeting; giving an invited briefing to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) — the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC); and participating in Track II nuclear talks in Moscow this past December with respect to how emerging technologies may affect strategic stability, deterrence. In Fall 2017, Kosal was appointed Highly Qualified Expert (HQE) for US Army’s Future Force Design IV (FFD-IV) and Deep Future Wargame (DFWG), the Chief of Staff of the Army’s major Wargame. She was the only US academic selected to participate in a series of United Nations meetings aimed to scan the horizon for developments and assess risks and responses in the technology fields of synthetic biology and nanobiotechnology and delivered the keynote address on “The Challenges of Reducing the Global Security Risks of Nanobiotechnology” at the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) in Turin, Italy.
Saskia Popescu
Dr. Saskia Popescu is an internationally recognized and experienced infectious disease epidemiologist and infection preventionist with a strong background in enhancing healthcare biopreparedness, infectious disease threats, pandemic preparedness/response, project management, translation of complex issues into frontline applications, and disease surveillance. She is passionate about healthcare biopreparedness, driving change across sectors in global health security, and antimicrobial resistance. Dr. Popescu is an Assistant Professor within the Biodefense graduate program at George Mason University, serving as a consultant with the World Health Organization, Clorox, and helping to lead the Netflix infection prevention efforts for return to production work.
She is also an Affiliate of the Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security, an adjunct professor in the University of Arizona College of Public Health Epidemiology and Biostatistics program, and served as a signatory on the NGO statement for the Biological Weapons Convention. Dr. Popescu is an Alumni Fellow of the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Health Security. She currently serves as a member of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Coronavirus Taskforce and is a member of the Committee on Data Needs to Monitor Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 within the Health and Medicine Division of theNational Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).
Dr. Popescu has created and disseminated a gap analysis for a six-hospital system to establish vulnerabilities for high-consequence diseases, helping to guide the creation of a high-consequence disease initiative to enhance readiness at the healthcare level. This work aided in rapid and coordinated responses to COVID-19. Her assessment and leadership regarding healthcare biopreparedness efforts has resulted in several peer-reviewed literature. She is certified in infection prevention (CIC), hospital preparedness through FEMA’s NIMS, and pandemic preparedness from the DHS Center for Domestic Preparedness. Popescu’s research addresses gaps within global health security, biodefense, healthcare biopreparedness, and the integration of antimicrobial resistance into global health security initiatives.
Kathleen Vogel
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Kathleen M. Vogel is Professor and Interim Director in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University. She was previously a tenured associate professor in the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland. She was also a tenured professor in the Department of Political Science and was Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at North Carolina State University (NC State), and held a joint appointment in the Department of Science and Technology Studies and Judith V. Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University. Vogel holds a Ph.D. in bio-physical chemistry from Princeton University. Her research focuses on studying the social and technical dimensions of bioweapons threats and the production of knowledge in intelligence assessments on WMD issues.
She has served in the U.S. Department of State as a Jefferson Science Fellow in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and as William C. Foster Fellow in the Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction in the Bureau of Nonproliferation. Vogel has also spent time as a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Cooperative Monitoring Center, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Martin Hugh-Jones
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Martin Hugh-Jones (PhD) was Professor for over 25 years in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences, Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine until his retirement in 2004. In addition, he was the Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems for Public Health until June 2004. Earlier he was the Chairman of the Joint WMO/FAO Working Group: Weather and Animal Production & Health. Dr. Hugh-Jones is one of the foremost authorities on anthrax, and was the Coordinator of the World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group on Anthrax Research and Control. He has also served as the Chairman of the WHO/Veterinary Public Health Working Group: “Anthrax: Epidemiology and Information.” He participated in the investigation of the 1979 anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk (now known as Yekaterinburg) in the former USSR. He was in Moscow and Yekaterinburg in 1992 when the Russian government admitted the source of the outbreak to have been an accidental spore emission from a biological warfare facility. He received his Bachelors, Masters and Veterinary Degrees while at Christ’s College, Cambridge University, and his Masters of Public Health at Tulane University. He was awarded his PhD, Cambridge, based on his publications on the 1967-68 Foot & Mouth epidemic in the UK. He is a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
