CNS Staff: Dr. Burke K. Zimmerman

Dr. Burke Zimmerman is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS). He received his formal training in physics and biophysics (AB, Harvard; Ph.D., Stanford), and was a research scientist in his early career (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine, Baltimore). Beginning in the mid-1970s, he held key science policy positions with the U.S. Congress and NIH before joining a leading biotechnology company in 1982 (Cetus Corporation). Throughout the 1980s, he was a consultant to and served in executive roles for several international biotechnology initiatives, especially those designed to bring biotechnology to bear on the problems of the lesser-developed regions of the world. Except for a one-year visiting professorship at the University of California (San Francisco and Berkeley) he lived in Europe from 1985 to 1999. During the latter part of this period, he founded and directed an innovative research company in Finland specializing in the design and development of novel vaccines and immunotherapeutics.

Dr. Zimmerman is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, which, in addition to research papers, deal with a broad range of issues in science policy and bioethics. In his book Biofuture: Confronting the Genetic Era (Plenum Press, New York, 1984, 305pp., foreword by Francis Crick.) he reviews for general reader the extraordinary advancements in the biological sciences since 1970, and analyzes and discusses "controversial" science and technology, the philosophy of discovery and determinism in science as well as man's (in)ability to anticipate the future.

Areas of Expertise:

• Molecular and structural biophysics
• Immunology and infectious diseases
• Bioethics
• Biological weapons