CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

wilkening@stanford.edu
(650) 723-9742 (voice)
(650) 723-0089 (fax)

Research Interests
science, technology and international security; ballistic missile defense; chemical and biological weapons proliferation; arms control

Dean Wilkening directs the Science Program at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University and spent 13 years at the RAND Corporation prior to coming to Stanford in 1996. His major research interests have been nuclear strategy and policy, arms control, the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, ballistic missile defense, and conventional force modernization. His most recent research focuses on ballistic missile defense and biological terrorism. His work on missile defense focuses on the broad strategic and political implications of deploying national and theater missile defenses, in particular, the impact of theater missile defense in Northeast Asia, and the technical feasibility of boost-phase interceptors for national and theater missile defense. His work on biological weapons focuses on understanding the scientific and technical uncertainties associated with predicting the outcome of hypothetical airborne biological weapon attacks, with the aim of devising more effective civil defenses, and a reanalysis of the accidental anthrax release in 1979 from a Russian military compound in Sverdlovsk with the aim of improving our understanding of the human effects of inhalation anthrax.