Major Fellowship Activities: Bollfrass focused on chemical and biological weapons. He wrote “Tests, Arrests Draw Attention to Indian Missiles,” “Iran-Iraq Chemical Warfare Aftershocks Persist,” “Libya Backs Out of CW Destruction Agreement,” “France, Libya Sign Nuclear Desalination Deal,” “Details Bedevil Libyan Grand Bargain,”“GAO Issues Warning on Biodefense Research,” and “Nuclear Material Consolidation Schedule Lags” for Arms Control Today. He updated and added content to factsheets on a variety of nonproliferation issues. He wrote “Grounds for Optimism and Action on Chemical Weapons Convention’s 10th Anniversary,” an ACA press release. He compiled a 27-page bibliography for an ACA Educator’s Guide that will be distributed to professors and covers all arms control aspects. He wrote two-page summaries of five nuclear weapon states’strategic positions, the status of their weapons programs, and their stances on various treaties and arms control regimes. He moderated a panel (whose participants included Daniel Ellsberg) on International Nonproliferation at the Think Outside the Bomb conference.
Current Activities: Bollfrass is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich. He researches and writes academic articles on nuclear weapons and intelligence issues. One part of his archival research agenda compares how well intelligence agencies perform in assessing other countries’ nuclear programs. Another part investigates hidden barriers to the spread of nuclear technologies. In parallel, he explores how climate affects civil wars and the ethical dilemmas of serving the security state. He was a Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center in 2017-2018 and an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
He received a Master of Public Affairs in International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 2012, where he focused on nuclear weapons and explored technical issues. He co-wrote Preventing A Nuclear-Armed Iran: A Phased Grand Agenda as part of a Woodrow Wilson School graduate policy workshop. In fall 2013 he will begin his second year as a PhD candidate in Security Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School where he will continue to focus on nonproliferation. He was a Research Assistant with the International Security and Nuclear Weapons project at the Henry L. Stimson Center from March 2008 until June 2010. He assisted Barry Blechman by providing research to develop a treaty for the elimination of all nuclear weapons by a date certain. He researched and wrote on the political, strategic, and technical obstacles to multilateral nuclear disarmament as part of Stimson’s “Unblocking the Road to Zero” series. He co-wrote chapters and co-edited several books in that series, and created the video game Cheater’s Risk on the Stimson website. He also contributed to the arms control community’s work to promote the CTBT.