Nine national security fellows were appointed for the 2007-2008 academic year. In addition, the Olin Institute is again hosting an Air Force National Defense Fellow. The postdoctoral fellows are from Cornell University, Stanford University, Columbia University, and Yale University. The dissertation fellows are from MIT, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

MICHAEL GLOSNY is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at MIT. His dissertation examines the strategic choices rising powers make to manage their international environment during their rise and the debates surrounding these different strategic choices. Mr. Glosny focuses on China's increase in global prominence and the impact this ascendance has had on the country's foreign relations strategy. Additionally, he supports his thesis through analysis of the historical cases of pre-World War I United States, Bismarckian Germany, and Wilhemine Germany. His research interests also include East Asian security, coercive strategies across the Taiwan Straits, and U.S. naval policy in East Asia. During the 2006-2007 academic year, Mr. Glosny was a predoctoral fellow at the Belfer Center. He has published articles in International Security and Asian Security.

e-mail: mglosny@wcfia.harvard.edu

BRIAN HERMANN, a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, is this year's U.S. Air Force National Defense Fellow. Previously, he was the Chief of the Education and Training Division of the Air Force Center for Systems Engineering and a faculty member in the Graduate School of Engineering and Management at the Air Force Institute at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. There he led a team of faculty and staff charged with reinvigorating systems engineering practices across the Air Force and researching new techniques to more efficiently deliver future generations of weapon systems capabilities. Lieutenant Colonel Hermann received his commission through the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Notre Dame in May 1987. A career communications officer, he has served in a variety of base level communications and acquisition-related software positions. Lieutenant Colonel Hermann earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science specializing in Software Engineering, from Arizona State University and a Masters of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies from the College of Naval Command and Staff at the U.S. Naval War College. His research at the Olin Institute will be centered on examining the role, nature, and legality of information warfare operations in a globally connected economy.

e-mail: bhermann@wcfia.harvard.edu

YEVGENIY KIRPICHEVSKY is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University. In his dissertation, Mr. Kirpichevsky explores how intelligence collection and technological change affect policy decisions with regard to secrecy and how these decisions influence conflict processes. His theory is built upon a formal, game-theoretic model of interstate bargaining, in which states can collect intelligence and choose between transparency and secrecy. Mr. Kirpichevsky spent the 2005 through 2007 academic years as a graduate student associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He published an article co-authored with Bear Braumoeller, "When More is Less: Integrating Qualitative Information in Boolean Statistics," in Political Analysis in Summer of 2005. Mr. Kirpichevsky is a resident tutor at the Pforzheimer House at Harvard.

e-mail: ykirpichevsky@wcfia.harvard.edu

JASON M. K. LYALL is Assistant Professor in Politics and International Affairs in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. His dissertation, "Paths of Ruin: Why Revisionist States Arise and Die in World Politics," was awarded the 2007 APSA Helen Dwight Reid Prize. While at the Olin Institute, Professor Lyall will complete a book manuscript that examines the impact of collective identity on a state's force employment and battlefield effectiveness. His research has been published in World Politics and has been supported by the United States Institute of Peace and the MacArthur Foundation, among others. Professor Lyall's research interests include the sources of military effectiveness, insurgency, geospatial data analysis, and Russia, especially the Northern Caucasus. He teaches courses on international security, and received the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Prize in 2007 for outstanding teaching by the Politics Department. Professor Lyall has also been a visiting scholar at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian Studies and at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell's Department of Government in 2005.

e-mail: jlyall@wcfia.harvard.edu

SIDDHARTH MOHANDAS is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University. His dissertation seeks to account for the variation in outcomes of military interventions that have sought to promote democratization and state-building. In his research, Mr. Mohandas explores the conditions under which even a substantial commitment of resources will not lead to desired outcomes, the ways in which the strategic motivations of interveners can undermine their reconstruction goals, and the potential tradeoff between state-building and democratization. He previously served as an associate editor of Foreign Affairs from 2001 to 2003 and interned as a speechwriter at the United Nations for Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Additionally, Mr. Mohandas has worked at the RAND Corporation on a history of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, drawing on previously unreleased internal documents. He has also studied the nature and trajectory of Indian nuclear-weapons doctrine for the Department of Defense through the Long Term Strategy Project. Mr. Mohandas holds an M.Phil. from Cambridge University and an A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard University.

e-mail: smohandas@wcfia.harvard.edu

ELIZABETH NATHAN SAUNDERS will complete the requirements for a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University in the summer of 2007. For the 2006-2007 academic year, Ms. Saunders was a visiting scholar at the American Political Science Association's Centennial Center in Washington. In 2005-2006, she was in residence as a predoctoral research fellow at the Brookings Institution. Ms. Saunders' dissertation, "Wars of Choice: Leadership, Threat Perception, and Military Interventions," provides a framework for understanding when and why great powers seek to transform foreign institutions and societies through military interventions. She has published a co-authored article in the American Journal of Political Science on the political and party preferences of immigrants in Europe, as well as an article in the International Studies Review on the transatlantic debate over "rogue states" in the international system. Ms. Saunders received her M.Phil. in International Relations from the University of Cambridge in 2001 and her A.B. in Physics and Astronomy and Astrophysics from Harvard in 2000. After her year at the Olin Institute, Ms. Saunders will join the faculty of George Washington University as an assistant professor of Political Science.

e-mail: esaunders@wcfia.harvard.edu

TODD SECHSER is Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. He completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at Stanford University in early 2007. In his dissertation, "Winning Without a Fight: Power, Reputation, and Compellent Threats in International Crises," Professor Sechser investigates reputation as a predictor of state behavior in international crises. His research focuses on finding a solution to the puzzling observation that as the relative power of the world's strongest states has grown, these states have experienced declining rates of success when making coercive demands of weaker powers. Professor Sechser's article, "Are Soldiers Less War-Prone than Statesmen?" was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. He was a fellow at CISAC during the 2003-2004 academic year; held a fellowship at the Center for International Security Studies at the University of Maryland from 2005-2006; and was a Belfer Center fellow for the 2004-2006 academic years. During his time at Olin, Professor Sechser plans to turn his dissertation into a book manuscript.

e-mail: tsechser@wcfia.harvard.edu

CAITLIN TALMADGE is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at MIT. Her dissertation examines the impact of civil-military relations on military effectiveness. Specifically, it develops and tests a theory about the manner in which "coup-proofing" practices -- civilian policies designed to reduce the risk of governmental overthrow by their own militaries -- influence the effectiveness of those militaries in combat against external adversaries. Ms. Talmadge has published on a variety of topics related to defense politics, military innovation, and nuclear proliferation and terrorism. In addition, she has just completed major research projects on the defense policy-making process in the United States and on potential U.S.-Iranian conflict. Ms. Talmadge has worked as a consultant to the Department of Defense and as an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She holds an A.B. in Government, summa cum laude, from Harvard. 

e-mail: ctalmadge@wcfia.harvard.edu

ALEX WEISIGER will complete the requirements for a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in the fall of 2007. Mr. Weisiger's dissertation, "The Origins of Armageddon: Little Wars, Long Wars, Large Wars, and Wars to the Death" applies bargaining theories of war to explain why some interstate wars are worse than others. His research interests more broadly concern explanations for the political decision to use force and explore empirical evidence for the proposition that democracy reduces conflict at the systemic level and the theoretical logic and implications of biased military intervention in wars. Mr. Weisiger has worked on the War Initiation and Termination project, which explores ways in which the formality of war has changed over time. He spent the 2006-2007 academic year as a fellow in the International Security/Intrastate Conflict programs at the Belfer Center. During his time at the Olin Institute, Mr. Weisiger plans on converting his dissertation into a book.

e-mail: aweisiger@wcfia.harvard.edu

KEREN YARHI-MILO is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation tests the extent to which changes in an adversary's military capabilities, its strategic-military doctrine, and its behavioral signals shape and transform perceptions of intentions for both senior civilian decision-makers and intelligence analysts. Her research examines US assessments of Soviet intentions during the Cold War, British evaluation of Nazi Germany's goals, Israel's estimates of the objectives of Egypt under Sadat, as well as current appraisals of the objectives of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and China. In addition to her academic career, Ms. Yarhi-Milo worked at the Mission of Israel to the United Nations, as well as served in the Israeli Defense Forces, Intelligence Branch, assessing diplomatic signaling in the context of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. For the 2006-2007 academic year, Ms. Yarhi-Milo was a visiting research scholar at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace at Columbia University. She has received awards for the study of Political Science from the Arthur Ross Foundation and the Christopher Browne Center for International Politics. Ms. Yarhi-Milo holds a Master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in Political Science from Columbia University.

e-mail: kyarhi-milo@wcfia.harvard.edu

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