Geoffrey Forden has been at MIT since 2000 where his research includes the analysis of Russian and Chinese space systems as well as trying to understand how proliferators acquire the know-how and industrial infrastructure to produce weapons of mass destruction. In 2002-2003, Dr. Forden spent a year on leave from MIT serving as the first Chief of Multidiscipline Analysis Section for UNMOVIC, the UN agency responsible for verifying and monitoring the dismantlement of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Prior to coming to MIT, he was a strategic weapons analyst in the National Security Division of the Congressional Budget Office after having spent a year at CISAC as a Science Fellow, a time he still looks back upon as a very happy and productive experience. Dr. Forden holds a PhD in physics.

This talk describes a novel methodology to understand global energy systems and their evolution. We are incorporating state-of-the-art open tools in information science and technology (Google, Google Earth, Wikis, Content Management Systems, etc.) to create a global real time observatory for energy infrastructure, generation, and consumption. The observatory will establish and update geographical and temporally referenced records and analyses of the historical, current, and evolving global energy systems, the energy end-use of individuals, and their associated environmental impacts. Changes over time in energy production, use, and infrastructure will be identified and correlated to drivers, such as demographics, economic policies, incentives, taxes, and costs of energy production by various technologies. As time permits Dr. Gupta will show, using Google Earth, existing data on power generation infrastructure in three countries (South Africa, India and the USA) and highlight examples of unanticipated crisis (South Africa), environment (USA) and exponential growth (India). Finally Dr. Gupta will comment on how/why trust and transparency created by democratization of information that such a system would provide could motivate cooperation, provide a framework for compliance and monitoring of global treaties, and precipitate action towards carbon-neutral systems.

Rajan Gupta is the leader of the Elementary Particles and Field Theory group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a Laboratory fellow.  He came to the USA in 1975 after obtaining his Masters in Physics from Delhi University, India, and earned his PhD in Theoretical Physics from The California Institute of Technology in 1982. The main thrust of his research is to understand the fundamental theories of elementary particle interactions, in particular the interactions of quarks and gluons and the properties hadrons composed of them. In addition, he uses modeling and simulations to study Biological and Statistical Mechanics systems, and to push the envelope of High Performance Computing. Starting in 1998 his interests broadened into the areas of health, education, development and energy security. He is currently carrying out an integrated systems analysis of global energy systems. In 2000 Dr. Gupta started the forum “International Security in the new Millennium” at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Its goals are to understand global issues dealing with societal and security challenges.

"Sunshine" policy, named after one of Aesop's fables, has been the catch phrase of South Korea's appeasement policy toward North Korea to stimulate and restructure the already collapsed North Korean economy and eventually to convert North Korea to a more conciliatory and cooperative state.

After 10 years of shining the sunlight on North Korea, however, evidences that those self-imposed goals have been achieved are rather scarce. This suggests that, from the beginning, the basic premises of Sunshine policy must have been fatally incongruous with the reality: North Korea should not have been portrayed as an innocent traveler leisurely walking down the street. Or, perhaps, the policy toward North Korea should have pursued more serious goals than just stripping a man of his coat.

In this talk, Dr. Park proposes an alternative to the "Sunshine vs North Wind", and discusses the policy implications of his proposal.

For the past 14 years, Dr. Jongkyu Park has worked on various macroeconomic policy issues of Korean economy including economic forecasts, monetary policy, inflation, budget deficit, exchange rate, savings rate, population aging, real estate bubble, and Japan's economic slowdown and revival. He received B.A. in Economics from Seoul National University in Korea, M.S. in Statistics from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.

As the building blocks of a new approach, this presentation will focus on four themes: 1) re-examination of ways to accelerate regionalism, with attention to leadership, energy cooperation, and the role of Russia; 2) development of a more comprehensive outlook on values, with attention to shared modernity, gradualism, and the role of Japan; 3) discussion of the next phase in managing North Korea, attentive to Sino-U.S. accord and the role of South Korea; and 4) evaluation of U.S. priorities and how a new president may view Northeast Asia within an overall agenda.   The objective of this talk will be to stimulate thinking on a region at a crossroads in order to capitalize on recent currents of change.

Gil Rozman attended Princeton's Critical Languages Program, returning to Carleton College as an independent major in Chinese and Russian studies. He received his PhD in sociology at Princeton with a field on Chinese, Japanese, and Russian societies and a plan to concentrate on historical comparisons first and on the domestic roots of international relations later. His books have appeared in clusters, including: four on comparative pre-modern urban development and stages of modernization; three on debates in the Soviet Union, China, and Japan over bilateral relations and changes in socialism; two on regionalism; and four on strategic thinking in Northeast Asia. Although he is still learning about Korea, many recent writings have looked at Korea within a regional context.

His speech will address the new challenges facing Southeastern Europe and the ways in which Romania will contribute to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Jointly sponsored by the Hoover Institution, the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the Forum on Contemporary Europe at Stanford University.