C
Committee Biographies
William Happer, committee chair, is professor in the Department of Physics at Princeton University. He specializes in modern optics, optical and radiofrequency spectroscopy of atoms and molecules, and spin-polarized atoms and nuclei. Dr. Happer received his Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University in 1964. In 1964 Dr. Happer went to Columbia University to accept a position as research associate in the Columbia Radiation Laboratory. During his tenure at Columbia he served as a professor in the Department of Physics. He also served as co-director of the Columbia Radiation Laboratory from 1971 to 1976 and as director from 1976-1979. In 1980, he joined the faculty at Princeton University. He was awarded the Class of 1909 Professorship of Physics at Princeton in 1988. In August 1991 he was appointed director of energy research in the Department of Energy (DOE) by President George H. W. Bush. While serving in that capacity he oversaw a basic research budget of $3 billion, which included much of the federal funding for high energy and nuclear physics, materials science, magnetic confinement fusion, environmental science, the human genome project, and other areas. After assisting in the transition of administrations he was reappointed professor of physics at Princeton University in June 1993 and named Eugene Higgens Professor of Physics and chair of the University Research Board in 1995. Throughout his career Dr. Happer has served as a scientific consultant to numerous firms, charitable organizations, and government agencies. From 1987 to 1990 he served as chair of the steering committee of JASON, a group of mostly academic scientists and engineers who advise agencies of the federal government on matters of defense, intelligence, energy policy, and other technical problems. He was a founder of Magnetic Imaging Technologies, Inc. (now part of Nycomed
Amersham), a startup company focused on the development of magnetic resonance imaging with laser-polarized He-3 and Xe-129. In addition to having published over 160 scientific papers, he is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the American Philosophical Society. He was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 1966, an Alexander von Humboldt Award in 1976, the 1997 Broida Prize, and the 1999 Davisson-Germer Prize of the American Physical Society.
John F. Ahearne is director of the Ethics Program at the Sigma Xi Center for Sigma Xi. Dr. Ahearne serves as a lecturer in public policy at Duke University, and an adjunct scholar at Resources for the Future. His professional interests include reactor safety, energy issues, resource allocation, and public policy management. He has served as commissioner and chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), systems analyst for the White House Energy Office, deputy assistant secretary of energy, and principal deputy assistant secretary of defense. Dr. Ahearne currently serves as vice-chair of DOE’s Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee. He has served as chair of the National Research Council’s Board on Radioactive Waste Management. In addition, Dr. Ahearne has been active on several National Research Council committees examining issues in risk assessment. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, AAAS, the Society for Risk Analysis, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of Sigma Xi, the American Nuclear Society, and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University.
Deborah Yarsike Ball is senior Russian political-military analyst for the Proliferation and Terrorism Prevention Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Her work focuses on Russian civil-military relations, military doctrine and security issues, the prevention of theft of nuclear weapons and weapon-usable nuclear material from the former Soviet Union, as well as the safety and security of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Dr. Ball conducted a survey of former Soviet weapons of mass destruction scientists to assess the extent to which the International Science and Technology Center’s program in Russia is meeting its nonproliferation goals. Ball’s publications include: “How Safe Is Russia’s Nuclear Arsenal?” in Jane’s Intelligence Review (December 1999), “The Social Crisis of the Russian Military,” in Russia’s Torn Safety Nets (Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg, eds. St. Martins, 2000) and “The State of Russian Science: Focus Groups with Nuclear Physicists” (with Theodore Gerber) in Post-Soviet Affairs (July-September 2002). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Science
and International Affairs, as well as Stanford’s Center for International Security and Arms Control.
Richard A. Meserve is the ninth president of the Carnegie Institution, after stepping down as chair of the NRC. Meserve served as NRC chair from October 1999 through April 2003. He was also a member of Carnegie’s board of trustees beginning in 1992. Before joining the NRC, Meserve was a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling where he also now serves as Senior of Counsel. With his Harvard law degree, received in 1975, and his Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford, awarded in 1976, he devoted his legal practice to technical issues arising in environmental and toxic tort litigation, counseling scientific societies and high-tech companies, and nuclear licensing. Early in his career, he served as legal counsel to the President’s science advisor, and was a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court and to Judge Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Meserve has served on numerous legal and scientific committees over the years, including many chartered by the National Academies. Among other affiliations, he is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the NAE, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the AAAS, and the American Physical Society. Meserve serves on the board of directors of the AAAS. Dr. Meserve received a B.A. from Tufts University in 1966, a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1975, and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University in 1976.
Mark F. Mullen is a project leader in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mr. Mullen has participated in U.S.-Russian cooperative threat reduction programs since their inception in 1992 and was one of the principal architects of DOE’s laboratory-to-laboratory MPC&A program, which sparked a rapid expansion in U.S.-Russian MPC&A cooperation beginning in 1994. From 1995 through 1997, Mr. Mullen served at DOE as advisor to the director of the Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation and Chairman of the Lab-to-Lab Program; in this capacity, he provided strategic and technical direction to the MPC&A Program. He has also contributed to and led many other U.S.-Russian cooperative programs, for both DOE and the Department of Defense. Mr. Mullen has 28 years of experience in nuclear materials safeguards, nuclear nonproliferation and international security. He also has extensive experience in risk analysis, cost-benefit analysis, decision analysis, and nuclear safety. Mr. Mullen holds a M.S. in nuclear engineering from the University of Washington and a B.A. in mathematics, also from the University of Washington.
William C. Potter is institute professor and director of the 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 (2004), and Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Options for Control (2000), the editor of Verification and SALT: The Challenge of Strategic Deception (1980), Verification and Arms Control (1985), and International Nuclear Trade and Nonproliferation (1990), and the 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, LLNL, the RAND Corporation, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has been a member of several committees of the NAS and currently serves on the NAS/Russian Academy of Sciences Joint Working Group on Nuclear Nonproliferation. 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 United Nations (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 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (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.
