Press Release
The Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) is excited to announce a new cohort of research fellows for the 2021-2022 academic year. These pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career fellows—along with one Visiting Scholar—will come together in Cambridge this fall from around the world to pursue a wide range of research projects with a nuclear policy focus.
“I’m thrilled to have such a great group of scholars joining Managing the Atom for the 2021-2022 academic year,” said Matthew Bunn, Co-Principal Investigator of MTA and the James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. “This international and interdisciplinary group brings fresh perspectives and expertise to challenges ranging from preventing nuclear war, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear terrorism to ensuring that the world’s nuclear energy system is safe, secure, and peaceful.”
“In a time of great insecurity and global challenges, MTA celebrates once again the opportunity to welcome and nurture a new class of extraordinary nuclear thinkers whose work will inform US and international nuclear policies for years to come,” said Francesca Giovannini, Executive Director of MTA. “The diversity of academic interests, worldviews and training offers MTA incoming fellows an unmatched opportunity to advance true interdisciplinary and international scholarship, forge long-lasting collaboration and challenge dominant paradigms no longer fitting the current nuclear landscape.”
This is the 25th cohort of MTA's long-running fellowship program. Fellows are supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as the Stanton and Koch Foundations. MTA also receives operating and research support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For more information about the Project on Managing the Atom, please visit belfercenter.org/mta.
Dr. Ali Ahmad is a Research Fellow studying energy policy at Harvard Kennedy School’s Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. His research interests include energy security and resilience and the political economy of nuclear energy in newcomer markets, with focus on the Middle East. Prior to joining MTA, Ali served as Director of the Energy Policy and Security Program at the American University of Beirut. From 2013 to 2016, Ali was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security where he worked on informing nuclear diplomacy with Iran. Outside academia, Ali is a senior consultant at the World Bank advising the Energy and Extractive Industries Global Practice. Ali holds a first degree in Physics from the Lebanese University and a Ph.D. in Engineering from Cambridge University.
Dr. Abolghasem Bayyenat is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from Syracuse University. His doctoral dissertation examined the political dynamics of Iran’s nuclear policymaking. Abolghasem’s current research is focused on Iran’s nuclear decision-making processes, and Iranian political elites’ national security and foreign policy thinking. He is currently developing his doctoral dissertation into a book manuscript and journal articles. More broadly, his research interests are grounded in scholarly and policy debates on the role of state identity in foreign policy and nuclear policymaking, economic sanctions in nuclear non-proliferation, and Middle Eastern international relations. Prior to pursuing doctoral studies, he worked for several years in Iran researching Iran’s foreign trade regime and the multilateral trading system. His writings on Iran’s foreign policy developments can be accessed on his website at www.IranDiplomacyWatch.com.
Dr. Wlliam d’Ambruoso is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Washington. His research interests include the causes of war and wartime violence. He is currently working on a book project that examines previous major wars, and future nuclear ones, as self-fulfilling prophecies. A second book explaining the recurrence of interrogational torture by the United States since the early 20th Century is under review with Oxford University Press. He taught previously at Bates College.
Dr. Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Project on Managing the Atom. A nuclear engineer by training, Julien applies his knowledge on nuclear technologies to investigate issues related to nuclear non-proliferation and arms control, advanced reactor technologies as well as policies around nuclear energy. Julien also works to promote open-source and transparent scientific tools that can contribute to research in nuclear security and nuclear technologies. He is the project lead for the open-source nuclear physics code ONIX (https://onix-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/). Having received a scientific education both in China and the U.S., Julien is also interested in studying how the rise of Chinese science affects international collaboration in science (such as the U.S.-China scientific partnership) as well as its impact on the nuclear industry and nuclear arms control.
Prior to joining MTA, Julien spent two years as a nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Princeton University, an M.Sc. in Nuclear Science and Technology from Tsinghua University Beijing, and a Diplôme d'Ingénieur (M.Sc. and B.Sc.Eng.) from Ecole Centrale de Marseille.
Dr. Mayumi Fukushima is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and the International Security Program. Her research interests include international security alliances, nuclear nonproliferation, and international security in East Asia. Her research has been published in International Affairs, The National Interest, and The American Interest, among others, and it has been supported by various organizations including the Stanton Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Murata Science Foundation.
She was recently a postdoctoral Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow with the RAND Corporation in 2020-21 and a Smith Richardson Foundation predoctoral fellow at Yale University's International Security Studies Program in 2018-19.
She earned a Ph.D. in political science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020. Prior to her Ph.D. training, she served as a fast-track career diplomat (deputy director) at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She is fluent in English, French, and Japanese and can converse in Chinese.
Matthew Hartwell is a Stanton Predoctoral Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and the International Security Program. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the American University School of International Service, a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center, and a research associate at the Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology. He holds an MSc from the School of Oriental and African Studies and a BA from Goldsmiths University. Matthew’s doctoral research examines population vulnerability in the context of American Cold War-era nuclear weapons policy.
Dr. Alexander Kamprad is a Postdoctoral Research Rellow at the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom and the International Security Program. Alexander is a political scientist (BA, University of Hagen) and criminologist (MA, University of Hamburg; Ph.D., Catholic University of Milan). He conducted violence-related research in Mexico and worked at the European External Action Service before joining the Joint Research Centre on Transnational Crime (Milan) in 2014. Following a visiting research affiliation at the European University in St. Petersburg, and consultancy work for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s Research Branch, he took a position at the German Federal Foreign Office’s Nuclear Arms Control Division in 2019. His main research interests include nuclear crimes and terrorism (within a wider context of crime, terrorism and violence); international nuclear security cooperation; nuclear arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation (esp. in Eastern Asia); and peaceful uses of nuclear technology, among other topics.
Maïlys Mangin is a Stanton Predoctoral Fellow with the Managing the Atom and the International Security Program. She has just submitted her thesis manuscript in Political Science (Lille University), and has a Master degree from University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her dissertation focuses on the role of the IAEA’s expertise in international negotiations to regulate Iran’s nuclear program. Based on this case study, she explores the contemporary uses of international security institutions, and their place in international political games. She was previously a member of the French Next Generation Nuclear and Strategy Network (RSN-NG) led by two French think tanks, the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS) and the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI).
Ruhee Neog is a research fellow with the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. She is Director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in India, and a Cooperative Monitoring Center Fellow with Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S. Ruhee looks at the role of norms, language, and institutions in shaping choices and behavior in international relations. As director of a think-tank, she leads the design and execution of projects across the policy spectrum, including Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues. The interdisciplinary nature of these projects also informs her research, which is currently on nuclear policy, cybersecurity, and South Asian border security. Ruhee’s past research includes India’s engagement with export control regimes, and its nuclear security culture—through fellowships supported by the Stimson Center and Nuclear Threat Initiative—and the role of traditional and new media in crisis decision-making. She has a forthcoming co-authored book on global armed conflicts that aims to make security issues accessible to a broader audience. Ruhee holds an MA in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics and a BA in Literature from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
Dr. Ariel Petrovics is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a Research Associate and Lecturer at University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. Her research examines the effectiveness of foreign policy strategies on issues of international security. Her book project compares foreign policy effectiveness for inducing nuclear reversal, while related research evaluates engagement strategies with renegade regimes, and the effects of new proliferators on international security, and the risk of counterproductive consequences in foreign policies. Her work has been published by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Texas National Security Review, among others. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Davis and has held positions as a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow, the IGCC Herbert York Fellow, and a research associate at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Global Security Research. Her work has been supported by the Stanton Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation.
Dr. Michael Buchdahl Roth is a joint-Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and Tel Aviv University’s Department of Public Policy. Dr. Roth’s research is at the intersection of engineering and public policy and focuses on deep-decarbonization of energy systems, nuclear power generation, energy and environmental policy. Specifically, Dr. Roth focuses on energy systems modeling and has published work that: details the economics of preserving existing U.S. nuclear power plants as a carbon abatement strategy, simulates how CO2 and local air pollution taxes could change the U.S. energy system, and carried out a wind turbine feasibility study for Oberlin College. Dr. Roth earned his Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, his Masters degrees at Duke University and University of Chicago, and his BA from Oberlin College. Dr. Roth’s current research is supported by the Zuckerman Institute.
Dr. Aditi Verma is a Visiting Scholar at the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom and a Research Scientist in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan where she will begin an appointment as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2022. Aditi was previously a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and the International Security Program. Aditi is broadly interested in how nuclear technologies specifically and complex systems broadly—and their institutional infrastructures—can be designed in more just, equitable, and participatory ways that are epistemically inclusive of both lay and expert perspectives. To this end, she is interested in developing a more fundamental understanding of the early stages of the design process to improve design practice and pedagogy, and also improve the tools with which designers of complex sociotechnical systems work. Aditi holds undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Nuclear Science and Engineering from MIT.
Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Wiitala is the US Air Force Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. He recently served as the Commander of the 509th Operations Support Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri. In this role he oversaw comprehensive mission support for the nation’s B-2 fleet. He earned his commission in 2003 through the University of Washington Air Force ROTC program after graduating from Seattle Pacific University where he majored in Political Science. He is a Command Pilot with extensive operational experience in both the C-17 and B-2. His staff experience includes a tour with United States Strategic Command where he worked on sustainment and modernization programs for the US nuclear bomber force. Lieutenant Colonel Wiitala holds master’s degrees in Diplomacy from Norwich University and Military Operational Art and Science from Air University. His research interests include deterrence theory, the design of coercive air campaigns, and strategies for preventing nuclear escalation.
Dr. Heather Williams is a Research Fellow at the Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. From 2020-2021 she was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Security Studies Program (SSP). She is visiting from King’s College London, where she is a Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department. From 2018 to 2019, Heather served as a Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords inquiry into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Disarmament, and until January 2015, Heather was a Research Fellow on Nuclear Weapons Policy at Chatham House. Her research focuses on arms control and strategic stability, and has been supported by the U.S. Department of Defense, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, MacArthur Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation of New York. Heather is currently one of five non-governmental facilitators in the Track 1 dialogue Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament (CEND), and is also an adjunct Research Staff Member in the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia, where she has worked since 2008. She is a Senior Associate (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a member of the Wilton Park Advisory Council, an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), and a Senior Associate Fellow with the European Leadership Network. Dr Williams completed her Ph.D. in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and she has a BA in International Relations and Russian Studies from Boston University, and an MA in Security Policy Studies from The George Washington University.