CNS Staff: Dr. Charles Ferguson
charles.ferguson[at]miis.edu
Dr. Charles Ferguson is Scientist-in-Residence based in the Washington D.C.
Office of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He joined CNS from the U.S. Department of State, where he was a Foreign Affairs Officer in the Office of the Senior Coordinator for Nuclear Safety in the Bureau of Nonproliferation. At the State Department, he helped coordinate U.S. government interagency nuclear safety policy on decommissioned Russian marine nuclear reactors, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) light water reactor project in the DPRK, Indian and Pakistani commercial nuclear power plants, and Russian plutonium production reactors. He has also served as a nuclear arms control and non-proliferation analyst at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), where he directed the Nuclear Policy Project. At FAS, he analyzed many arms control and nonproliferation issues, including missile defense, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and deep cuts in nuclear arsenals. His public policy articles, commentaries, and letters have appeared in Arms Control Today, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Defense News, Disarmament Diplomacy, The Naval War College Review, Physics Today, The FAS Public Interest Report, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post.
A United States Naval Academy alumnus, achieving a B.S. degree with distinction in physics and a commission as an officer in the U.S. Navy, he graduated from the Naval Nuclear Power School and the Submarine Officers School. While supervising an engineering crew of a nuclear power and propulsion plant on a fleet ballistic missile submarine, he also served as that ship's sonar and reactor controls officer. Upon leaving the Navy, he earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in physics from Boston University. Dr. Ferguson has also worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland.
Areas of Expertise:
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Terrorism: