Academy of Sciences, she has also served on cooperative projects and activities with colleagues from India and Pakistan. Her experience also includes having served as a key staff member for the recent consensus report, Improving Democracy Assistance: Building Knowledge through Evaluations and Research, which provided findings and recommendations to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Democracy and Governance office. Rita speaks Russian and German, holds a master of arts in Russian studies from Georgetown University, and is currently a Ph.D. student of Russian history at Georgetown University. In 2007, she received a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship to conduct archival research on her dissertation, which is provisionally titled, Lived Liberalism: Local Expressions of Political Beliefs in Russia, 1860-1914.

Carl-Gustav Anderson joined the Board on Life Sciences of the National Research Council in March 2009 and serves as senior program assistant. He received a B.A. in philosophy from American University in 2009, completing significant research projects on the status of empiricism in Tiantai Buddhism and the influence of modern science on the philosophy and development of the Kyoto School. He has focused his research interests on Southeast Asian interactions with Buddhism, with particular emphasis on the development of Buddhist philosophy of science and Buddhist approaches to feminism. He has worked closely with the All Women’s Action Society (Malaysia), helping to engage young men in feminist dialogue and to present a feminist response to the unique identity politics of contemporary Malaysia.