Patricia Morris is a Spring 2011 Scoville Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, where she is working with John Isaacs and Kingston Reif and focusing on nuclear treaty follow-on, Middle East Nuclear Free Zone, defense budget, nuclear terrorism threat, and Iran. She has been working on writing op-eds, articles for the website and blog posts for the Center. Her pieces include an op-ed about House of Representative cuts to funding for non-proliferation programs and articles and blog posts about the consequences of upheaval in Egypt on its civilian nuclear program, the threat of nuclear terrorism, U.S. arms sales to Middle Eastern states and the nuclear situation in Japan. She is also working to plan a series of dinner meetings among nuclear experts from the policy, advocacy and public relations world, as well as journalists, to discuss possible next steps in arms reductions.
Morris earned a Master of Science in Comparative Politics Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics in 2010. While at LSE, she focused her studies on Middle Eastern affairs, humanitarian intervention and ethnic, nationalist and religious conflict. Her master’s thesis addressed disporan influence in conflict perpetuation and prevention. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College in Political Science and French in 2008. At Wellesley, she was awarded a grant to do field research in Bosnia-Herzegovina for her thesis, a just war analysis of NATO’s intervention. While in Bosnia-Herzegovina she was a Human Rights Delegate with Global Youth Connect, where she did field research and helped conduct peace and reconciliation dialogues with youths. Most recently, Morris was a Research Assistant for Professor David Held on globalization in the Arabian Gulf and an Editorial Intern for Global Policy, interviewing policymakers and scholars on trends in global policy. She is a co-author of the “Forum for Cities in Transition Report Summary,” a report on track II negotiations between representatives of international divided cities, such as Nicosia. She is a former Press Intern in Senator Edward Kennedy’s Boston office and a Media Relations Intern at MIT. While in college, she studied French and Political Science at L’Institut d’études politiques de Paris (“Sciences Po”) for a year and held an internship in international rights at a French publishing company. She is fluent in French and proficient in Arabic. She is from Boston and Trinidad, and spent fifteen years abroad, living in Kuwait and Europe.
Cassidy Regan is a Spring 2011 Scoville Fellow with the Friends Committee on National Legislation Education Fund, where she is working with Bridget Moix and Mary Stata and focusing on conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and regional and ethnic conflict in Kenya. She organized the DC speaking tour of a Kenyan peace coordinator hosted by FCNL, arranged meetings and roundtable discussions focused on conflict prevention and peacebuilding in Kenya in anticipation of the 2012 elections, with staff from the State Department, USAID, the House and Senate Africa Subcommittees, the Kenyan Embassy, and local NGOs. She also wrote two blog posts, one focused on the visitor from Kenya; another focused on Secretary of State Clinton’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She has taken the lead on FCNL’s work related to conflict prevention in Kenya (including coordinating conference calls with FCNL’s Quaker coalition group, developing a base of FCNL constituents interested in the work, etc.). She has also begun research towards updating FCNL’s Kenya policy brief and generating educational material focused on the savings of conflict prevention compared to the costs of mitigating conflict once it occurs.
Regan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude in 2010, earning a bachelor’s degree with academic distinction in International Relations and minors in Urban Studies and Chinese. She was a member of Sigma Iota Rho International Relations Honors Society as well as the recipient of the 2008-2009 Greek Scholar Award for academic excellence. During college she spent a semester studying Mandarin and political science in Beijing. Through a grant from the Center for the Advanced Study of India, she later interned with an organization in New Delhi dedicated to sustainable social and environmental justice where she researched the efficacy of programs focused on Delhi’s wastepicker population. As a senior, she completed an honors thesis analyzing Chinese and Indian compliance with international human rights, climate change, and nuclear non-proliferation law. While on campus, she was involved in movements to empower and to end violence against women both at home and abroad and co-directed several feminist theater productions. She also acted in numerous student performances. Prior to beginning her fellowship, Regan conducted research on the legal components of community land trusts for Professor Andrew Lamas of Penn’s Urban Studies Program. She also worked as an associate consultant focusing on small city revitalization and community economic development for Praxis Consulting Group. She is originally from Redding, Connecticut.
Javier Serrat is a Spring 2011 Scoville Fellow with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, where he is working with Sandy Spector and focusing on modeling the regional impact of developments in Iran nuclear policy and program, assessing current issues pertaining to the IAEA, with a special look at the strengthened safeguards regime, and examining how to control proliferation-relevant assistance between Syria, Iran, and North Korea. He also initiated a project on countering proliferation finance.
Serrat graduated from Boston University in 2009, with a BA in International Relations and Musicology and a minor in Russian and Eastern European Studies. He also completed training in international nuclear safeguards policy and analysis at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 2010 through the Department of Energy’s Next Generation Safeguards Initiative. After spending a semester in the legal advice section of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, he focused his security studies on nuclear nonproliferation. After college he interned at the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna, where he served in the IAEA Section. In that capacity he managed the U.S. personnel portfolio at the international organizations, assisted in the IAEA budget negotiations, and carried out research and analysis on technical cooperation and nuclear security. He spent a year in Berlin as a participant of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program through the State Department. After college, Serrat joined Boston University’s Division of International Programs, where he advised students about 90+ study abroad programs and contributed to a review of the enrollment process. A trained composer, conductor, and singer, he has performed with choral ensembles and as a soloist, and has conducted orchestras in Europe and the U.S. He speaks Spanish, German, Italian and French. He also studied Russian and, more recently, Arabic and Dari. The descendant of émigrés from Barcelona, he is also studying Catalan. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Catherine Skroch is a Spring 2011 Scoville Fellow at the Truman National Security Project Educational Institute, where she is working with Camille Eiss and Sarah Bruno to formulate the nuclear threat curriculum to be used at trainings for Congressional Security Scholars on Capitol Hill, as well as simulations and trainings for Truman Fellows at their annual meeting. She is working on policy briefs focusing on the Cooperative Threat Initiative and future of nuclear energy. She has also organized a Nuclear Nonproliferation Expert Group from among the Truman Fellows community, which meets frequently to discuss the latest in nuclear issues and host events and media trainings to further educate the community. Beyond this, she has been helping to build TNSP’s Democracy and Human Rights Initiative as a forum for Fellows to engage in discussion about key national security issues ranging from arms control and weapons sales, to human security, to unrest in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Skroch graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009 with degrees in Political Science, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies, and African Studies. She spent a year studying at Université Gaston Berger in Senegal as part of a UW-Madison study abroad program. She was the recipient of the Abraham S. Burack and F. Chandler Young Awards for outstanding research abroad for her year-long fieldwork examining local resolutions to violent civil war in the Casamance region of Senegal. She has worked with international students and refugees in various capacities, with a dialogue and reconciliation initiative in Israel and the West Bank through the QUEST Program, and as a Soliya Connect Program Facilitator, using new media to mediate dialogue on relevant political and social issues between young people around the world. She worked for Wisconsin Public Television as a documentary editor and transcriber, was interviewed on NPR’s Here on Earth about her experiences, and presented a thesis on dependency theory in the Congo at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Violence. Post-college, Skroch was a Fulbright Scholar in Morocco, researching post-conflict democratic transition via the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, while also interning at a medical rehabilitation center for torture victims. She grew up in the Philippines and Wisconsin, and speaks French, Arabic, Moroccan Darija, and Wolof.
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 and Deepti Choubey. He is working on the Nuclear Materials Security Index for which he has done fact checking for the data used in the 51-variable model used to grade countries’ performances on nuclear materials security, conducted a literature review on the threat of nuclear terrorism, and wrote a few sections of the report. He is putting together a report on the various topics that could be addressed at the U.S.-China Security Dialogue conference that NTI is sponsoring in October 2012. He has researched U.S.-China views on spent fuel reprocessing, missile defense, space weapons, North Korea, Iran, future steps in disarmament, nuclear posture/modernization, material control and accounting, and civilian use of HEU. He is also helping prepare a briefing book for an upcoming trip to China by former Senator Sam Nunn, helped edit an NTI book on the future of NATO nuclear posture. and briefed NTI senior staff on the administration’s most recent positions on budgeting for nuclear weapons/nonproliferation and the future of U.S. nuclear posture ahead of a meeting they had with the Chief of Staff at the NSC.
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.