Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons
The Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons Control, founded in 1989 at the Federation of American Scientists, moved in November 2003 to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation to join the Center's new program on biological and chemical weapons control. At present, the defining goals of the Working Group are reinforcing the norm against biological weapons and broadening the norm to encompass all misuse of biology. Major interests include preventing the development of biochemical disabling agents as weapons, promoting international measures to monitor biological weapons-capable activities, global cooperative measures for combating infectious diseases, ethical education of bioscientists, and monitoring US biodefense and anti-bioterrorism activities.
The Working Group develops working papers and reports on technical and policy issues and holds seminars and briefings for U.S. and international officials. Working Group members have extensive experience with biological weapons issues and have an array of technical expertise that they contribute on a voluntary basis.
The Working Group can be reached at cbw AT armscontrolcenter DOT org or by contacting the chair, Dr. Mark Wheelis, at mlwheelis AT ucdavis DOT edu. The mailing address at the Center's Capitol Hill headquarters is:
CACNP Scientists Working Group
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
322 4th Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002
202-546-0795
MEMBERSHIP 2009
Mark Wheelis
WG Chair
Microbiology, History
Senior Lecturer Emeritus, Section of Microbiology/DBS University of California at Davis
Marie Isabelle Chevrier
Political Science
Professor, University of Texas at Dallas
David Fidler
International Law and Health
Professor, University of Indiana School of Law
Martin Furmanski
History, Pathology
John Gilbert
Senior Science Fellow
Elisa D. Harris
Arms Control, History
Senior Research Scholar, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM)
Lynn Klotz
Senior Science Fellow
Biotechnology
Industrial Consultant
Gregory Koblentz
Political Science
Deputy Director, Biodefense Graduate Program
Assistant Professor, George Mason University
Milton Leitenberg
Arms Control, History
Senior Research Scholar, Center for International and Security Studies, University of Maryland
Ambassador James Leonard
U.S. Negotiator of Biological Weapons Convention
Jack Melling
Senior Science Fellow, Medical Defense
Former Director, Centre for Applied Microbiology & Research, Porton Down
Swiftwater, PA and London
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg
Molecular Biology
Professor Emeritus, State University of New York
Kathleen Vogel
Science and Technology Studies
Assistant Professor, Cornell University
John P. (Jack) Woodall
Epidemiology
Visiting Professor (ret.)
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
WORKING GROUP MEMBER BIOGRAPHIES
Marie Isabelle Chevrier (PhD) is associate professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she teaches courses in Negotiations, International Negotiations, Public Management, War and Peace and other topics. She currently serves as Chair of the Working Group. She is the former associate director of the Harvard Sussex Program on Chemical and Biological Armaments and Arms Limitation at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and has been on the faculty of two NATO Advanced Study Institutes on biological weapons control. Dr. Chevrier's extensive research on arms control negotiations has been published in numerous journals. She has contributed book chapters to Arms Control Toward the 21st Century, Biological Warfare edited by Ray Zilinskas and Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat edited by Joshua Lederberg and others. Dr. Chevrier has served as a member of the Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons since its inception. She is also an active member of the Pugwash Study Group on the Implementation of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions. In 2004 Dr. Chevrier received a Fulbright scholarship to teach at the Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia University, in New Delhi, India. Dr. Chevrier received her Master's and Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University.
David P. Fidler (JD) is the James Calamaras Professor of Law at Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington and is the Director of the Indiana University Center on American and Global Security. He is one of the world's leading experts on international law and public health, with an emphasis on infectious diseases. His publications include International Law and Infectious Diseases (Clarendon Press, 1999), SARS, Governance, and the Globalization of Disease (Palgrave, 2004), and Biosecurity in the Global Age: Biological Weapons, Public Health, and the Rule of Law (forthcoming from Stanford University Press, 2008)(with Lawrence O. Gostin). He has served as an international legal consultant to the World Health Organization, World Bank, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Science Board Task Force on Defense Against Biological Weapons, and various non-governmental organizations.
Martin Furmanski (MD) is a physician with an interest in the medical aspects and laboratory evaluation of chemical and biological weapons. His interests in contemporary arms control include the medical limitations of non-lethal chemical agents and the application of the historical experience of national chemical and biological weapons programs to the technical evaluation of present chemical and biological threats. He has done field investigations of survivors of WWII CW and BW attacks in China with Sheldon H Harris, and compiled substantial documentation on the technical development of the Japanese and US, British and Canadian BW programs from the 1940s to 1960s. He has contributed to several historical treatments of chemical and biological weapons developments for this period. Dr. Furmanski received his undergraduate training in Medical Microbiology at Stanford University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and his Medical training at UCLA, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha. He is board certified in Anatomic Pathology and Clinical Pathology (Medical Microbiology, Toxicology, and general Laboratory Medicine).
John Gilbert is a Senior Science Fellow with the Center and is also currently a senior arms control analyst with a large professional and technical services company where he has supported a variety of national and international chemical, biological, and nuclear material control, non-proliferation, and counter-terrorism initiatives. Over the past ten years, he has specialized in on-site inspection operations and management. Previously, Mr. Gilbert served as a senior officer in the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a Colonel after more than 25 years. He served on and commanded strategic missile crews, spent over 15 years managing organizations that analyzed foreign WMD capabilities and delivery systems, and was one of the first-ever U.S. on-site inspectors (under the INF Treaty) beginning in 1988. He established the chemical and biological operations division within the U.S. On-Site Inspection Agency (now part of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency), and was a member of U.S. national Chemical Weapons delegations and negotiating teams in Geneva, The Hague, and Moscow. He has trained several hundred arms control inspectors for the United States, including those conducting missile, nuclear, and chemical inspections, biological weapon fact-finding visits, and other operations. Many of the people he trained served with distinction on UNSCOM and UNMOVIC (successor to UNSCOM) teams.
Elisa D. Harris is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). From 1993 to 2001, she was Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls on the National Security Council staff, where she had primary responsibility for coordinating U.S. policy on chemical, biological and missile proliferation issues. Ms. Harris has held a number of research positions, including in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in London and the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She is a former SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow in International Peace and Security Studies and staff consultant to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives. Ms. Harris is the author of numerous publications on chemical and biological weapons issues and has testified frequently before the U.S. Congress. She has an A.B. in Government from Georgetown University and an M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University.
Lynn Klotz (PhD) is a biotechnology consultant, former Harvard faculty member, and former biotechnology executive. A Senior Science Fellow at the Center, Dr. Klotz is expert in many areas of biotechnology and biological-weapons control. He has published several papers on biological- and chemical-weapons issues relating to biotechnology, industry, and the now-abandoned BWC Protocol. He was a recipient of the prestigious Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar grant for teaching excellence while at Harvard and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for The Gene Age.
Gregory D. Koblentz (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs and Deputy Director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University. Dr. Koblentz is also a Research Fellow with the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to arriving at George Mason, Dr. Koblentz was a visiting Assistant Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and a Fellow at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. His research and teaching focus on international security, terrorism, homeland security, and weapons of mass destruction.
Milton Leitenberg is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, where he has been working on issues related to biological weapons and arms control since 1989. He was trained as a biochemist and moved into the field of arms control in 1966. In 1968, Leitenberg was the first American recruited to work at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), where he was a member of the team that produced the landmark six-volume study, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, between 1971 and 1973. He was subsequently affiliated with the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and the Center for International Studies Peace Program at Cornell University. Widely published, Mr. Leitenberg has authored or edited a dozen books or book length studies, and published 180 journal papers, monographs, and book chapters. Among these are major portions of Tactical Nuclear Weapons, European Perspectives, SIPRI (Taylor and Francis, 1978); Great Power Intervention in the Middle East (edited, Pergamon Press, 1979); The Structure of Defense Industry: An International Survey (edited, Croom Helm, 1983); and The Wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, 1945 - 1982: A Bibliographic Guide (ABC-Clio, 1984). CISSM published his major monograph Biological Weapons Arms Control in 1986. His most recent work is Assessing the Biological and Bioterrorism Threat, published in 2005 by the US Army War College.
Ambassador James Leonard is a co-founder of the Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons in 1989 and has served with the Group ever since. Ambassador Leonard was the chief U.S. negotiator for the Biological Weapons Convention under President Richard Nixon as Assistant Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) from 1969 to 1973. After a brief retirement from government service from 1973 to 1977, during which he served as President of the United Nations Association (UNA), Ambassador Leonard returned to serve as Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations. From 1979 to 1981, he was Deputy Special Representative to the Middle East peace negotiations. Prior to joining ACDA, Ambassador Leonard spent twenty years as a Foreign Service Officer in Damascas, Moscow, Paris, Taipei and Washington, DC. Since retiring in 1981, he has been involved as a consultant or board member with a number of non-governmental organizations, including the Aspen Institute, the Palme Commission, the Committee on National Security, the Washington Council on Non-Proliferation, the British American Security Information Council, the Canberra Commission, and others.
Jack Melling (PhD) is a Senior Science Fellow with the Center and is also currently a Project Manager at Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio, a consultant to the US General Accounting Office, and Senior Scientific Advisor to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in New York. Melling currently serves as Chair of the Society of Chemical Industry's Board of Trustees. Previously, Dr. Melling served the UK Ministry of Defence as the Chief Executive and Principal Scientific Officer of the Microbiological Research Authority, Porton Down. He has also served as Deputy Director, Director of Vaccine Research and Production, and Head of the Division of Biologics at the Center for Applied Microbiology and Research (CAMR) at Porton Down. After his retirement at Porton Down, he directed the Salk Institute Biologicals Development Center in Pennsylvania and the Karl Landsteiner Institute for Vaccine Development in Vienna, Austria.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg (PhD) is a co-founder of the Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons. Trained as a molecular biologist, Dr. Rosenberg was for many years a cancer researcher at Memorial-Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and was Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Cornell Medical College. She left those positions in 1990 to become Research Professor of Environmental Science at the State University of New York at Purchase, where she is able to devote most of her time to biological weapons issues. Dr. Rosenberg was a member of a panel of scientists that advised President Clinton, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Health on biological weapons issues in 1998, and was an Advisor to the OTA study of Weapons of Mass Destruction in 1993-4. She is now a member of the National Academy of Sciences Working Group on Biological Weapons. Dr. Rosenberg is an officer of ProMED-mail, the global electronic rapid reporting system for outbreaks of emerging diseases, which was launched by the Working Group in 1994 as a prototype and later became an independent entity.
Kathleen Vogelis an assistant professor, with a joint appointment in the Department of Science and Technology Studies and Peace Studies Program, Cornell University. Vogel holds a PhD in biological chemistry from Princeton University. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty, Vogel was appointed as a William C. Foster Fellow in the US Department of State's Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction. Vogel has also spent time as a visiting scholar at the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Sandia National Laboratories and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies working on nonproliferation issues involving biological weapons.
Mark Wheelis (PhD) has been a member of the Working Group since the early 1990s, and currently serves as its Chair. He received his doctorate in bacteriology from the University of California Berkeley in 1969, and did post-doctoral work in biochemistry at the University of Illinois. He was on the faculty of the Microbiology Department at the University of California (Davis) from 1970 to 2008. For the last 20 years, his research has been focused on the history and control of chemical and biological weapons. Dr. Wheelis has consulted or served with a number of U.S. and international organizations, including the Government Accountability Office, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Health Organization, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and the Program on Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED). He is co-editor of Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 (Harvard University Press, 2006) and Incapacitating Biochemical Weapons: Promise or Peril (Roman and Littlefield, 2007).
John P. (Jack) Woodal (PhD) is a virologist and epidemiologist who is Visiting Professor and Director (ret.), Nucleus for the Investigation of Emerging Infectious Diseases, Institute of Medical Biochemistry, Center for Health Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He co-founded and is an Associate Editor of ProMED-mail (www.promedmail.org). Dr. Woodall was formerly Director of the Arbovirus Laboratory, New York State Department of Health, Albany, NY, USA; Scientist at the Division of Epidemiological Surveillance & Health Situation & Trend Assessment, WHO/Geneva; Director of the San Juan Laboratories, CDC, Puerto Rico; and Senior Scientist at the East African Virus Research Institute in Entebbe, Uganda. He co-founded, with the Swiss Disaster Relief Unit, Task Force 'Scorpio' to respond to collateral damage to civilians in case of the release of NBC weapons in the first Gulf War, and debriefed the leaders of the first chemical and biological inspection teams of UNSCOM. Dr. Woodall has published several papers in SIPRI's Chemical and Biological Weapons series, the Geneva International Peace Research Institutes's papers, NATO Advanced Research Workshop papers, and BWPP Occasional Papers.