"On the second anniversary of the Japan triple disaster, which had tragically claimed thousands of lives, CTBTO Faces is featuring an interview with Wendy Watson-Wright, head of one of the international organizations which the CTBTO is collaborating with in the field of tsunami warning. Watson-Wright is Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (IOC-UNESCO). Prior to that, Watson-Wright held a...

"In an interview with Thomas Schelling, the CTBTO Faces interview series presents one of the most influential thinkers of nuclear weapons strategy, nuclear deterrence and game theory during the Cold War. Schelling, aged 92, is a U.S. economist and professor of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy and arms control at the University of Maryland, United States. From 1948 to 1953, Schelling served with the Marshall Plan in Europe, then the White House, and the Executive Office of...

"The latest CTBTO Faces interview is with Roald Sagdeev, Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, United States. Back in the Soviet Union, Sagdeev served as scientific advisor to President Mikhail Gorbachev on issues related to civil and military applications of outer space. Sagdeev, a graduate of the Moscow State University, was director of the Space Research Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences as well as a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He received the Carl...

"Throughout his long career, Ambassador Linton Brooks has dealt with and influenced nuclear weapon issues like few others. From 2002 to 2007, Brooks served as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), where he oversaw the U.S. nuclear weapons programme and the Department of Energy's international non-proliferation programmes. Prior to that, Brooks held senior positions in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, where he was the chief U.S. negotiator for the...

"Throughout her career, Christine Wing worked with the National Disarmament Program at the American Friends Service Committee, the International Peace and Security at the Ford Foundation in New York, the Nuclear Threat Initiative and at Princeton University's Center of International Studies. In her interview, Wing remembers how the widespread fear of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War motivated her to work in the field of nuclear disarmament, explaining how the demise of the Soviet...

"This week, CTBTO Faces features an interview with Morton H. Halperin, an American expert on foreign policy and civil liberties. Halperin served under the Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton administrations as an advisor on military affairs and arms control and worked with a number of think tanks and universities. Halperin was instrumental in the negotiations of several arms control treaties including the SALT and the START treaties. He is currently Senior Advisor at the New...

The newest CTBTO Faces interview is with Robert E. Frye, Emmy award winning producer and director of documentaries and network news programmes for over four decades. Frye was interviewed by CTBTO Spokesperson Annika Thunborg in Vienna in May 2012, when his documentary "In My Lifetime" was screened at the United Nations in Vienna. The film tells the story of the long struggle to fight the dangers posed by nuclear weapons: http://thenuclearworld.org/2011/02/20/robert-e-frye-2/ In his interview,...

"Richard Rhodes is an American author and historian who has devoted over three decades to research and writing about the dawn of the nuclear weapons age. His Pulitzer Prize-winning book, 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' (1986), has sold over one million copies. Rhodes has also authored the play 'Reykjavik', which re-enacts the famous 1986 summit where Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan came close to abolishing all nuclear weapons. In this interview, given on the occasion of the staged...

"This CTBTO Faces interview is with Ana Teresa Dengo, Costa Rican Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Vienna since 2006. In this function, she chaired the CTBTO's main Member States' body in 2007 and 2012. Before, Dengo worked at the CTBTO from 1998 to 2006. In her interview, she explains her country's tradition in promoting disarmament and the merits of regional treaties such as the Tlatelolco Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons from Latin America. Dengo identifies the need for...

"With over five decades of involvement in nuclear weapons technology, Richard Garwin has advised U.S. administrations - both Republican and Democrat - on a range of issues including the safety of nuclear weapons and arms control. Garwin has spent much of his career promoting nuclear disarmament and warning about the need to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Garwin testified before the U.S. Senate in 1999, when the issue of ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty...

"Zia Mian is a physicist, nuclear expert and disarmament activist. Born in Pakistan, educated in the United Kingdom and working in the United States since 1996, Mian brings international breadth to his work and support for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. Mian is a leading authority on issues of peace and security in South Asia and has produced several books and two documentary films on the subject. He is a Deputy Chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) and...

"Jay Zucca is Program Director for Non-proliferation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, United States. A geophysicist by profession, Zucca is actively involved in nuclear weapons issues, in particular in the field of nuclear monitoring, seismic instrumentation development and regional seismology. Zucca was a member of the U.S. delegation when the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was being negotiated at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in the mid-1990s....

"INENS is a young and dynamic organization for young professionals in the nuclear field. Founded in 2010, it already has some 400 members from 55 different countries and is rapidly expanding. The network aims to facilitate dialogue among emerging nuclear specialists in order to foster better understanding of the different issues within the field, and to develop new insights, be it policy, academia, science or industry. INENS Executive Director, Meena Singelee, is a founder member of the...

"Philip Taubman is a journalist, author and two-time winner of the George Polk Award. For more than 30 years, he worked for The New York Times, including as bureau chief for the Washington and Moscow offices. Taubman is now Consulting Professor at the Center of International Security and Cooperation of Stanford University. He has authored two books: ""Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage"" and ""The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their...

"Frank von Hippel is a nuclear physicist who has worked on nuclear policy issues for more than 40 years. During the 1980s, he worked closely with Evgeny Velikhov, Mikhail Gorbachev's science advisor, to help establish the technical basis for new arms-control and disarmament initiatives. From September 1993 through 1994, while Assistant Director for National Security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, von Hippel played a major role in developing cooperative programs to...

"Ellen Williams is an American physicist and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, specializing in condensed matter and surface physics. Williams chaired the Committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which reviewed technical issues related to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The Committee's report was released in March 2012. She currently works as chief scientist at British/Beyond Petroleum.Williams spoke with the CTBTO during a...

"Alyn Ware trained as a kindergarten teacher in New Zealand before establishing peace education programmes in pre-school, primary and secondary schools, and helping establish peace education as part of the national curriculum. He was active in the campaigns to end nuclear tests in the Pacific and to create a nuclear-free-zone in New Zealand. Since the late 1980s, Ware has worked internationally, advancing disarmament education and nuclear disarmament initiatives at the United Nations, in...

"Prior to his current position, Bharath Gopalaswamy was a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's (SIPRI) Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Numerical Acoustics from Trinity College, Dublin, and was a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University's Peace Studies Program, where he applied his technical knowledge to international security issues.Gopalaswamy talked to CTBTO Faces in June 2012...

"Wolfgang Weiss currently chairs the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). Weiss, a physicist by training, was the driving force behind the creation of a national environmental radiological surveillance system in Germany after the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Today, he heads the Department of Radiation Protection and Health of the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection. He was involved in the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) as a...

"Mikhail Gorbachev was Soviet Union's last head of State until its dissolution in 1991. Both his internal reforms (Glasnost and Perestroika) and his new approach to international détente, in particular his pursuit of far-reaching nuclear disarmament measures, played an important role in ending the Cold War. The summit of Reykjavik, Iceland, from 11 to 12 October 1986, was the second meeting between Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan. As we now know from declassified documents, the two...

Paul G. Richards is an American seismologist and geophysicist specialized in the theory of seismic wave link propagation, the physics of earthquakes, monitoring underground nuclear explosions, and nuclear arms control. He is currently the Mellon Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Richards has been involved in scientific studies on the verification of the CTBT since the Treaty's negotiations in the 1990s in Geneva. Richards...

Raymond Jeanloz is Professor of Earth and Planetary Science and Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, United States. Jeanloz also chairs the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Committee on International Security and Arms Control. He has been actively involved in the verification technologies of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) for many years and was a member of the CTBT Committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which released its report in April...

"In September 2011, Benno Laggner was appointed Head of the Task Force on Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in the Swiss Federal Foreign Ministry, making him the country's top diplomat on such issues. Switzerland has a long tradition of supporting and promoting both international law and disarmament. Today it is leading efforts to delegitimize nuclear weapons by arguing that their use would violate the fundamental rules and principles of international humanitarian law. At the May...

"David Strangway is a geophysicist who joined NASA in 1970 as Chief of the Geophysics Branch, where he was responsible for the geophysical aspects of the Apollo missions. He is the founder, first President and Chancellor of Quest University Canada, a private non-profit arts and sciences university. In recognition of his scientific works, Strangway has received several awards including the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1972 for his scientific contributions to NASA. He was...

"In her 30-year long career in the United Nations, Angela Kane has served in numerous positions including Peacekeeping, Disarmament, Political Affairs and Management. As the newly appointed High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Kane is eminently qualified to advise and support the UN Secretary-General on all issues related to arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament. Just a few weeks after taking up her new position, while attending the May 2012...