Gerald Epstein is senior fellow for science and security in the CSIS Homeland Security Program, where he works on issues including reducing and countering biological weapons threats and improving relations between the scientific research and national security communities. Coming to CSIS from the Institute for Defense Analyses, he is also an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

From 1996 to 2001, he worked at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), serving for the last year in a joint appointment as assistant director for national security at OSTP and senior director for science and technology on the National Security Council staff. From 1983 to 1989 and again from 1991 until its demise in 1995, he worked at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, where he focused on security issues including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

From 1989 to 1991, he directed a project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government on the relationship between civil and military technologies and is a coauthor of Beyond Spinoff: Military and Commercial Technologies in a Changing World (Harvard Business School, 1992).

Epstein is a fellow of the American Physical Society and chairs its Committee on International Scientific Affairs. He serves on the editorial board for the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism and on the Biological Threats Panel of the National Academies’ Committee on International Security and Arms Control. His Ph.D., in physics, is from the University of California at Berkeley.