Elisa D. Harris

Elisa Harris

Elisa D. Harris is a Non-Resident Senior Researcher at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, USA, where her research focuses on biosecurity issues, including health security and cooperative approaches to controlling highly dangerous pathogens. She has an A.B. in Government from Georgetown University and an M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University. Ms. Harris is the author or editor of over two dozen publications on biosecurity, dual-use technology, and chemical and biological weapons proliferation and arms control issues, including “Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice” (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2016). She has testified frequently before the U.S. Congress and provided expert statements to meetings of the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the Biological Weapons Convention Experts Group. From 1993 to 2001, she was Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls on the White House National Security Council staff, where she had primary responsibility for coordinating U.S. policy on biological, chemical, and missile proliferation issues. She has held research positions in the Nonproliferation Program at the Stimson Center, the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution, the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, and the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies in London. She has been a consultant to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where she led a project on dual-use technologies in the nuclear, cyber and biotechnology fields, and a staff consultant to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. She is a former SSRC MacArthur Foundation Fellow in International Peace and Security Studies. 

 

Dual-Use Threats: The Case of Biological Technology