International Studies Doctoral Candidate Selected for Prestigious Program

Kimberly Gilligan, an Old Dominion University doctoral student in the Graduate Program in International Studies, has been chosen to participate in the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Nuclear Scholars Initiative in Washington, D.C.

The highly competitive program brings together graduate students and young professionals with a demonstrated interest in nuclear issues to attend monthly daylong workshops from January to June 2009. Experts in the field of nuclear issues will participate in each workshop, engaging in an exchange of ideas with the class of scholars, which includes candidates from institutions such as Columbia, Georgetown, UC Berkeley and Harvard. The program will conclude with the presentation and publication of a research paper.

Gilligan's professional experience includes three years at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, working in the area of nuclear safeguards. She also served as a consultant at Los Alamos National Laboratory on safeguards technical issues.

Gilligan has taken part in other prestigious nuclear nonproliferation programs since beginning her studies at ODU, and earned a fellowship last summer to the Public Policy and Nuclear Threats program at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego. She also was a student associate in summer 2007 at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs' Project on Managing the Atom.

For more information about the Nuclear Scholars Initiative program, visit http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_progj/task,view/id,446.

For more information about ODU's Graduate Program in International Studies, visit http://al.odu.edu/gpis.