Patricia Lewis
Deputy Director and Scientist-in-Residence at CNS
Dr. Patricia Lewis is the Deputy Director and Scientist-in-Residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Prior to assuming this appointment in August 2008, Dr. Lewis served for ten years as the Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) in Geneva, Switzerland. She also previously was the Director of VERTIC, the Verification Research and Training Centre in London, UK.
A dual national of Ireland and the United Kingdom, Dr. Lewis holds a BSc in Physics from the University of Manchester and a PhD in Nuclear Structure Physics from the University of Birmingham. Dr. Lewis has lectured in Physics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, from where she also carried out research at the Australian National University in Canberra, and as a visiting lecturer at Imperial College London. She has also worked as a volunteer at the Rehabilitation Centres for Children, and at the Thakurpukur Cancer Centre in Kolkata, India.
Dr. Lewis has published and spoken widely on aspects of science, verification, arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. She was the Elizabeth Poppleton Fellow at the Australian National University in 1992 and the UK Governmental Expert on the 1989-1990 United Nations Expert Study on Verification in All its Aspects. Dr. Lewis was a consultant the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the UK Ministry of Defence on verifying the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. She was a reviewer for the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (1996), a Member of the Tokyo Forum for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (1998-1999) and a Commissioner (Ireland) on the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (2004-2006, commonly referred to as the Blix Commission). In her capacity as Director of UNIDIR, she was a member of the United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters (1997-2008).
Expertise
Nuclear structure physics, arms control, disarmament, and nuclear nonproliferation.
Dr. Lewis interviewed on TalkWorks
Courses
Courses offered in the past four years.
▲ indicates offered in the current term
▹ indicates offered in the upcoming term[s]
IPOL 8559 - Science & Technology for NPTS
This course provides students with a solid foundation in scientific and technical fundamentals critical to nonproliferation and terrorism policy analysis. Such policy analyses often require strong foundational knowledge of basic scientific and technical concepts in order to understand, create, and inform policy decisions. The course begins with an introduction to science and the scientific method and then evolves into the three main areas: biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons and relevant technologies. Topics covered in the biological component include fundamental concepts related to microorganisms, DNA, RNA, proteins, and processes of infection and disease. Topics covered in the chemistry component include fundamental concepts related to atomic structure and the periodic table, chemical structural representations, functional groups, reactivity, toxicity, as well as modern separation, purification and analytic techniques commonly used for chemical species. Applications of the fundamental concepts in the first two topics are further developed in relation to features of chemical and biological weapons and warfare, including agents, delivery methods and effects. Topics covered in the nuclear component part of the course includes radioactivity, uranium, nuclear weapons, radiation detection instrumentation and applications, environmental plumes, and various instrumentation and analysis techniques. Upon completion of this course students will have a deeper appreciation for the debate on various verification solutions that have been proposed for compliance under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and nuclear treaties.
Spring 2011 - MIIS, Fall 2011 - MIIS
IPOL 8677 - Sem:Tracking Nonprolf Progress
IPOL 8678 - Sem:VerifyingNuclearDisarmamnt
This course is a directed study, interactive seminar course for the advanced student. Students will be required to complete several short assignments and to write a research paper on an allocated, practical aspect of the verification of nuclear arms control and to participate in a class simulation to design a verification regime for specified scenarios. The lecture component of the course will start by discussing verification approaches in general and how these have been historically applied. We will then have a series of technical lectures focusing on the technology that will allow the verification of nuclear weapons stocks, confirmation of nuclear weapons elimination, and the prohibition of weapon remanufacture and assembly. The course will finish with the presentation of students research papers to the class.
Fall 2009 - MIIS, Fall 2010 - MIIS
