I am a technology and security expert whose work spans the cognitive sciences, international security, and the future of arms control. My research bridges disciplines—ranging from the neuroscience of decision-making under risk and uncertainty to the policy challenges posed by emerging military technologies, AI innovation, and nuclear modernization. With a career that integrates foundational studies on subjective valuation in the brain and pioneering analyses of innovation’s impact on nonproliferation systems, I bring a future-focused perspective to critical security challenges. My publications explore the vulnerabilities created by technological acceleration, the evolving landscape of great-power competition, and the urgent need for adaptive governance structures to manage strategic risks in an increasingly complex world. My forthcoming book, The Arms Control Paradox, offers a roadmap for rethinking arms control strategies in an era of accelerating disruption. 

I’m currently a Senior Fellow and Director of the Future Security Scenarios Lab at New America, where I lead projects that reimagine the governance of AI, nuclear weapons, and other sensitive technologies to better support human well-being, resilience, and global stability. My work connects scholarly rigor with real-world policy design, bridging innovation and international norms.  I currently teach a course on weapons proliferation and emerging security threats  in the Security Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

I also advise organizations across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors on strategic technology risk management, modernization of arms control and nonproliferation policies, governance of AI, cyber, and dual-use technologies, strengthening defense trade and export control systems, and cognitive and behavioral aspects of security policy. I bring a strategic, interdisciplinary perspective to complex technology-policy challenges, helping clients navigate uncertainty, shape responsible innovation, and design forward-looking security architectures.

I was previously a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, a Fellow at National Defense University's Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction and a research scholar at the Center for International Security Studies at Maryland.  I was previously in Berlin, Germany as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow, examining German military innovation, and the modernization of nonproliferation efforts as required by novel technologies and a changing geo-political landscape.  Prior to that I was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.  I completed my dissertation while a Research Fellow at SIPRI North America and the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.   I have also worked as a policy analyst at the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls and as a member of the U.S. Arms Control Delegation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna, Austria.  

I received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California Berkeley in  2013, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007, an M.A. in French Studies (Intellectual History) from Columbia University in 2001, and an A.B. in Philosophy with Honors from Stanford University in 2000.  I have two daughters and live in D.C.