CPR Initiative Board of Advisors
Research Affiliate in the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Dr. Lisbeth Gronlund has worked on technical and policy issues related to nuclear weapons, missile defenses, and space weapons for over three decades.
She is currently a Research Affiliate in the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. Lisbeth spent most of her career—from 1992 to 2020—at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program, where she was a Senior Scientist and, beginning in 2002, also the Co-director of the program. Prior to joining UCS, she was a research fellow at the MIT Defense and Arms Control Studies Program and at the Center for International Security Studies at the University of Maryland. She holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University.
Believing that a sound democracy requires independent and well-informed critique of government policy, Lisbeth has devoted her career to using her scientific background to (1) analyze US nuclear weapons and missile defense programs, counter false government claims and propose alternative plans; (2) provide information to members of Congress, the public and media; and (3) increase the scientific knowledge base relevant to these issues. Accordingly, she has written about technical and policy issues for both lay and expert readers and given talks about these issues to both lay and expert audiences.
Lisbeth helped establish and was a primary organizer of the International Summer Symposiums on Science and World Affairs, which each year from 1989 through 2019 brought together for eight days some 40 young scientists from around the world who wanted to apply their expertise to nuclear weapons policy and related security issues. These meetings both helped to foster a new generation of independent scientists with expertise on security issues and created an international community of technical researchers working on these issues.
Lisbeth is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physics Society (APS), and a co-recipient of the 2001 Joseph A. Burton Forum Award of the APS “for creative and sustained leadership in building an international arms-control-physics community and for her excellence in arms control physics.”