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Global Catastrophic Risks Conference - Speakers Biographies

Dr William Potter , Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies, and Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS)

Dr William Potter is Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies, and Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS). He also directs the MIIS Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He is the author of Nuclear Profiles of the Soviet Successor States (1993), Soviet Decisionmaking for Chernobyl: An Analysis of System Performance and Policy Change (1990), and Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (1982); co-author of The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism (2005) and Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Options for Control (2000); editor of Verification and SALT: The Challenge of Strategic Deception (1980), Verification and Arms Control (1985), and International Nuclear Trade and Nonproliferation (1990) ; and co-editor of Dangerous Weapons, Desperate States (1999), Dismantling the Cold War: U.S. and NIS Perspectives on the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (1997), Soviet Decisionmaking for National Security (1984), The Nuclear Suppliers and Nonproliferation (1985), Continuity and Change in Soviet-East European Relations (1989), and International Missile Bazaar: The New Suppliers' Network (1994). Dr Potter has contributed chapters and articles to over eighty-five scholarly books and journals. He has served as a consultant to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the RAND Corporation, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has been a member of numerous committees of the National Academy of Sciences and currently serves on the Nonproliferation Panel of the Academy's Committee on International Security and Arms Control. His present research focuses on nuclear terrorism and on proliferation issues involving the post-Soviet states. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and served for five years on the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters and the Board of Trustees of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. He currently serves on the International Advisory Board of the Center for Policy Studies in Russia ( Moscow). He was an advisor to the delegation of Kyrgyzstan to the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and to the 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003 and 2004 sessions of the NPT Preparatory Committee, as well as to the 2000 and 2005 NPT Review Conferences.