International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation

Bulletin 18 - News

Summer Symposium 2001 in Berlin

Eryn MacDonald

The 13th International Summer Symposium on Science and World Affairs was the latest in an annual series of meetings designed to encourage and support the development of young scientists working on international security and arms control research. The main goal of these meetings is to develop an international community of independent analysts with technical expertise who also understand the policy aspects of international security issues. A particular focus has been on encouraging the development of such analysts in countries where there is not a strong tradition of public interest science and on integrating them into the international community of researchers with similar interests and backgrounds. Participants are encouraged to approach security issues from an international perspective, in keeping with the philosophy that the security of individual nations is best served by enhancing the security of all nations.

The Summer Symposiums are organized each year by the Union of Concerned Scientists and a local co-host. This year's co-hosts were the IANUS group at Darmstadt University of Technology and the Radiological Measurements Laboratory, Department of Physics at Bremen University. The meeting is funded by grants from the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the Ploughshares Fund.

This year's meeting was held from July 21 - 29 2001, at the European Academy, Berlin. Thirty seven participants from eleven countries - including China, Germany, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States - spent the eight days discussing their research and the role that scientists can play in policy debates. In keeping with the meeting's goal of increasing the number of technically trained researchers working on these issues, about half of the participants had not been to a previous meeting. This year's meeting included a particularly strong Indian delegation, with five participants, three of whom were new to the Symposiums, and all of whom were physicists. Because the meeting was held in Germany, it also included a relatively large German group, and was able to include a good number of the younger researchers in Germany's technical arms control community.

During the Symposium, each participant gave a talk on research that they were working on now or that is in the planning stages. These talks offer newer participants an opportunity that they might not have at more traditional meetings to discuss their own research, and give both new and more experienced participants a chance to get feedback on their projects from others in the field. Talks this year covered a wide range of issues, reflecting the interests of individual participants, with some topics such as missile defense issues the subject of a large number of talks. In addition to the talks, participants organized several supplementary discussions on topics of interest such as how scientists can affect policy, the South Asian nuclear situation, and fellowship and funding opportunities.

For more information on the Summer Symposium, see the website at www.summersymposium.org. The date and location for next year's meeting have not been determined yet, but will be posted to the site when they are available.