ISTC Executive Director, Adriaan van der Meer, gave a presentation on ISTC 16 year experience on the first day of the Conference on Science and International Security: Addressing the Challenges of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, held on 8-9 November. The event focused on achievements and new challenges of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, inspired by US Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, and other programs that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Senator Lugar, one of the originators of ISTC in the beginning of the 90s, commented in his keynote opening address “Many of the scientists who have cooperated with American counterparts through the Nunn-Lugar program and other programs, such as the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow, have become colleagues and friends. Their strategic competition has been replaced by scientific cooperation. If continually resourced and appropriately guided, we can build on this existing success and globalize this concept.”

The biannual event was jointly organized by the Institute of Nuclear Fusion (DENIM) of the Polytechnic University in Madrid, Spain, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California.

The goal of this meeting is to bring together international leaders and policy makers, along with leading scientists to explore the key issues and challenges to international security.

Mr van der Meer stated in his speech that “ISTC has been a key instrument of the G8 Global Partnership non-proliferation program. Recently, an independent evaluation characterized the Center as a ‘unique mechanism for fostering international collaboration, enhancing coordination of projects and sharing lessons learned’”.

Read Mr van der Meer's address on the Role of the Scientific Community in Global Security Engagement