CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Jeremiah D. Sullivan, professor and head of physics at the University of Illinois, has been appointed to the Advisory Panel of the Security-Related Civil Science and Technology Sub-Program by the NATO Science Committee. The appointment, which begins in September, is for four years.
The NATO Science Program was founded in 1958, with the establishment of the NATO Science Committee, following the recommendations of the Committee on
Non-Military Cooperation in NATO. The report of that non-military cooperation committee asserted that progress in the fields of science and technology can be decisive in determining the security of nations and their positions in world affairs, and stated that science and technology were areas of special importance to the Atlantic community.
The Science Committee immediately recognized that the training of young scientists and engineers was of paramount importance, and introduced a group of support mechanisms which in essence remain today Advanced Study Institutes, Collaborative Research Grants and Science Fellowships. The predominant characteristics of the program have continued to be an emphasis on cooperation and catalysis, support for high scientific quality, and a capacity for rapid response to new developments.
Since the early 1990s the NATO Science Program has served a wider scientific community, as scientists from NATO’s Partner countries of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council have become eligible for support, while at the same time a proportion of the program has been reserved for the traditional collaboration between scientists in NATO countries. In 1999, the Science Program was transformed so that support is now devoted to collaboration between partner-country and NATO-country scientists or to contributing toward research support in partner countries.
The Science Committee is assisted in its work of assessing and selecting applications for support by advisory panels whose members are selected by the committee from among the international scientific community.
Sullivan is a former director of the UI’s Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics in 1960 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and his doctorate in physics in 1964 from Princeton University. He worked in the theoretical physics group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center from 1964 to 1967, and then joined the UI faculty.
Sullivan has made wide-ranging, lasting contributions to arms control and international security, including important detailed calculations of shock-wave profiles from underground tests and studies of technologies for enhancing the effectiveness of peace operations, comprehensive nuclear test-ban issues, science-based stockpile stewardship, technology and policy of ballistic missile defenses, arms control verification, military and civilian uses of space, and science and public policy.
He serves on the board of directors of the Arms Control Association; on the Advisory Committee for the Nonproliferation, Arms Control and International Security Directorate of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; on the Review Committee for the National Security Division of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; on the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and on the External Advisory Committee for the Technology Program of the Cornell Peace Studies Program.
