Listings of all CNS staff with areas of expertise, contact information, biographies, and recent publications.

Updated: Dec 18, 2012

Yousaf Butt

Research Professor and Scientist-in-residence

Activities

Yousaf Butt is a Research Professor and Scientist-in-Residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.

Areas of Research

• Space security
• Missile defense
• Astrophysics
• Nuclear physics
• Nuclear nonproliferation and arms control

Background

Previously, Dr. Butt was a scientific consultant to the Federation of American Scientists and a physicist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He was on the instrument operations team responsible for the main focal plane instrument aboard NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory from 1999-2004. He has also been a fellow in the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences and a research fellow in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Education

• BS, Mechanical Engineering and Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• PhD, nuclear physics, Yale University

Bibliography

• "A Queen for a Queen," Foreign Policy, June 5, 2012.
• "By not lifting sanctions, West and Obama are helping Iran enrich uranium," Christian Science Monitor, May 25, 2012.
• "Debunking the Missile-Defense Myth," The National Interest, May 7, 2012.
• "A New Plan for Iran: Lift Sanctions, Increase Monitoring," Washington Post, March 25, 2012.
• "Are Sanctions a Fatwa on Iran?" The National Interest, January 13, 2012.
• "Stop the Madness," Foreign Policy, January 19, 2012.
• "How the Reset Was Upset," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 18, 2011.
• "Among Gingrich's Passions, a Doomsday Vision," New York Times, December 12, 2011.
• "Flawed US Missile Defence Plan Should be Abandoned," Financial Times, December 5, 2011.
• "A 'New START' to an arms race between the US and Russia?" Christian Science Monitor, November 30, 2011.
• "The Delusion of Missile Defense," International Herald Tribune, September 20, 2011.
• "Billions for Missile Defense, Not a Dime for Common Sense," Foreign Policy, June 10, 2011.
• "Why Russia's anti missile defense," Politico, June 8, 2011.
• "What Missile Defense?" Foreign Policy, October 21, 2009.