Kelsey Davenport is a Fall 2011 Scoville Fellow at the Arms Control Association, where she is working with Tom Collina on the military budget and nuclear security. Within the military budget she has researched the costs of nuclear modernization programs and the potential savings that could be generated by reducing the nuclear triad. She has contributed pieces to Arms Control Today covering developments on issues such as the Nuclear Security Summit and NNSA budget appropriations and co-authored an op-ed in Defense News on proposed reductions to strategic nuclear delivery systems. She is also working with Partnership for Global Security to produce a report outlining the progress made on national commitments from the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit that will be published in advance of the 2012 Seoul Summit.
Davenport is completing a Master of Arts in Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. As part of her degree she spent six months working in Jerusalem at the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, where she worked on Track II diplomatic negotiations and studied alternative security paradigms in the Middle East. Her master’s paper examined the impact of American Foreign Military Financing on state stability and sectarian conflict in Lebanon. She also worked as a research assistant for Professor Robert Johansen, examining questions related to the impact of the International Criminal Court. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a teacher in the Mississippi Delta with Teach for America. Davenport graduated summa cum laude from Butler University in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts with highest honors in International Studies and Political Science and minors in German and Peace Studies. She received the 2007 Peacebuilder Award and the 2007 International Studies Award for graduating with the highest academic record in the department. During her senior year she co-founded Butler for Peace, an organization designed to increase awareness of conflict issues and worked as a teaching and research assistant in the political science department. While in college she studied German for a summer at the Freie Universität Berlin and spent a semester in Germany and Eastern Europe studying the relationship between nationalism and ethnicity in conflict. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC as an intern for Senator Richard Lugar. She speaks German and has studied Turkish. Davenport is originally from Marquette, Michigan.
Philippe de Koning is a Fall 2011 Scoville Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative where he is working with Page Stoutland in the Nuclear Materials Security program and providing support to other senior staff. He provided research assistance for the Nuclear Materials Security Index, a 51-variable model used to grade countries’ performances on nuclear materials security, which was published in January 2012. He is also helping design NTI’s future projects in China, and is providing support to a project meant to enhance U.S.-Russia cooperation on countering nuclear smuggling. He has also helped brief NTI CEO Senator Sam Nunn for various Track II meetings in which he has participated in 2012.
De Koning graduated from Stanford University in 2010 with a BA in International Relations with Interdisciplinary Honors in International Security Studies, distinction, and Phi Beta Kappa. During college he worked for Professor Siegfried Hecker at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), as both a research assistant and teaching assistant for two courses on international security. He also served as a research assistant to Dr. Condoleezza Rice at the Hoover Institution, conducting research on East Asia for her recent book “No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington.” At Stanford, de Koning taught a course on public service leadership, co-founded a student group aimed at encouraging discussions on the benefits of microfinance on campus, was National Events Director for the non-profit organization FACE AIDS, and served as a Resident Assistant in a freshman dormitory. He studied abroad at Doshisha University in Kyoto as an undergraduate. During 2010-2011 he studied nuclear policy, Japanese defense, and East Asian regional security as a Fulbright Fellow based at Hiroshima University in Japan. Originally from Paris, France, he is fluent in French, Dutch, Japanese, and is an intermediate Spanish speaker. His work has been published in the Asahi Shimbun, the Diplomat, and the Stanford Journal of International Relations.
Robert Taj Moore is a Fall 2011 Scoville Fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center’s Unblocking the Road to Zero project where he is working with Barry Blechman on U.S. foreign policy toward Iran and on nuclear proliferation efforts there. He is coauthoring a forthcoming Stimson publication that analyzes the political developments in Iran and the greater Middle East since 2011 and how those changes should influence U.S. policies given the transformed regional security framework. The publication will likely accompany a workshop and/or presentation on the subject.
Moore graduated from Brown University with an AB in Political Science in 2011. During college, he established and served as president of Brown’s chapter of Global Zero, an international effort designed to support the strategic, multilateral elimination of nuclear weapons globally, and eventually became a Global Zero Regional Team Leader for the Northeast area. Moore was an Associate Editor for the Brown Journal of World Affairs, a semi-annual publication that invites policy experts and academics to engage in debate on international issues. In September 2009, he was a student speaker at the United Nations’ International Day of Peace celebration where he discussed the importance of nuclear disarmament as a world and youth concern. He has also interned for Congressman Rush D. Holt on Capitol Hill where he assisted the Foreign Affairs Legislative Assistant. Moore has done research at Domino’s Pizza India Limited related to economic development in India and the rise of India’s fast food industry. In addition, he has interned at the International Institute of Rhode Island where he taught English language classes for refugees and also studied Iraqi refugee issues. He attended the 23rd Winter Course of ISODARCO, a winter series of global security courses based primarily in Italy. He was also a Managing Editor for the Brown Policy Review, a student publication that publishes student articles on various policy issues. He studied Farsi for two years. He is originally from Rahway, New Jersey.
Jerome Simons is a Fall 2011 Scoville Fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). At NRDC’s nuclear program, he is working with Jordan Weaver on an advocacy tool for nuclear energy policy. It will be an online application to help the public make informed decisions about the current state and future of nuclear power. He is also focusing on Germany’s nuclear phase-out and the industry response to Fukushima Daiichi. He is involved in NRDC’s filing of a contention to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and will be involved in the follow-up. His planned activities include a focus on security studies by evaluating plutonium weapons risks.
Simons earned a BS in Physics and a BA in Mathematics in 2011 from the Johns Hopkins University. He has had several research internships in physics and engineering at Hopkins, the Berlin Institute of Technology, and the Free University Berlin; some of his work is relevant to an understanding of aircraft and missile technologies as well as the economics of nuclear technologies. During college he was president and managed the business office of Transatlantic Youth Networks, a German-American group that engages in transatlantic exchange and promotes dialogue between Europe and the United States. He was a staff writer for the science section of the JHU News-Letter, the student-run newspaper. Simons was awarded the Hopkins International Scholarship that covered full tuition for four years, the German Academic Exchange Service Scholarship, awarded to young researchers based on academic merit, and the Theodor Schwann Prize for achievements in the natural sciences. He plays the alto saxophone in a jazz band. In addition to his native German he is fluent in French and Dutch. He grew up in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Seth Smith is a Spring 2012 Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies where he is working with Amy Smithson and Sandy Spector on chemical weapons security, Iran sanctions, Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, and UN Security Council Resolution 1540.
Smith graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a BA in Middle Eastern and North African Studies and a minor in Political Science in 2011. He is a graduate of the Defense Language Institute where he earned his certification as a Persian-Farsi cryptologic linguist. He served six years in the U.S. Navy in this capacity, over four of which were spent in the CENCOM/NAVCENT area of operations. He worked in Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq as an Airborne Mission Supervisor and was considered a subject matter expert on the orders of battle of all of the Gulf states. Smith was awarded a number of medals and citations over the course of his service, including the Presidential Air Medal, the Navy Achievement Medal, and the Royal Australian Navy Commendation Medal. Since receiving an honorable discharge from active duty, Smith has worked as an intern in the Washington office of Senator Joe Lieberman(I-CT), at the Pacific Council on International Police, and at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute in the Stability Operations Division. While working for Sen. Lieberman, Smith’s work focused on tracking the Defense Authorization Act, and researching the issue of U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense systems in Europe. The arguments he made in his point papers and memos were used by the Senator during debates on the floor of the Senate. At the State Department, he utilized his military and academic experience to assist the Stability Operations Division with evaluating their Iraq Familiarization course and with compiling and analyzing statistics on their Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan courses.. He has been accepted to Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School where he plans to earn an MA in International Affairs with a focus in International Security. Smith is originally from Fresno, California.
Victoria Webbe is a Spring 2012 Fellow at the Truman National Security Project Educational Institute where she is working with Matt Rhoades on national security and women, peace, and security.
Webbe earned a Master of Arts in International Affairs from The New School for Public Engagement in 2011, specializing in peacebuilding and development. While in graduate school, Victoria spent time as a consultant for the Global Network of Women’s Peacebuilders in Liberia, partnering with local women’s organizations to monitor the inclusion of women’s issues in the peacebuilding process. The results of this research were published as part of the Global Network’s international report, “In-Country Monitoring of Security Council Resolution 1325.” Victoria has written about the important role of civil society in peacebuilding both in her Master’s thesis and in an article published in The Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. As a graduate student, Victoria also performed research for a professor for a paper commissioned by UNDP on the current state of international peace processes, and for another professor for a journal article on the definition of human security. She received her Bachelors of Arts from Drew University in 2009, where she double majored in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Political Science, with minors in History and French. In 2008, Victoria received a Ewing Center Foundation Grant to intern at the Women’s Environment and Development Organization, working on the civil society advocacy campaign that led to the creation of UN Women. During the spring of her senior year, she studied in Ghana, where she volunteered at Women in Law and Development in Africa monitoring discussion of women’s issues in Parliament. She was awarded the Bessie Stak Schiffman Award for excellence in women’s studies in 2009. In addition to her academic work, Victoria has interned with a number of human rights and women’s organizations including Human Rights Watch, and the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. She has studied French and Twi. She is originally from Meyersville, New Jersey.