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

Updated: Sep 19, 2008

Jessica C. Varnum

Jessica Varnum is a Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS). At CNS, she manages the nuclear and missile content for numerous Nuclear Threat Initiative country profiles (primarily in the Middle East). She is also contributing a book chapter on Turkey to a CNS project forecasting twenty-first century nuclear proliferation developments. Varnum's other research interests include U.S.-led cooperative threat reduction programs, and the relationship between technological innovation and nonproliferation policy (e.g., in the development and implementation of more proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors).

From September 2006 to June 2008, she worked as a graduate research assistant at CNS. Varnum has interned for the Center for Strategic and International Studies through the support of the Anne Armstrong Leadership Award, at the Atlantic Council of the United States, and with U.S. Senators Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe.

She received a UC IGCC Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Summer Seminar Fellowship (2008), and the award for "Most Outstanding Paper" at the 2007 Women in International Security Summer Symposium in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared in The Nonproliferation Review and The International Herald Tribune.

Varnum earned an M.A. in international policy studies with a certificate in nonproliferation studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 2008, and graduated summa cum laude from Colby College in 2006 with a B.A. in government and international studies. She is fluent in French.