Biographical Information

Kosta Tsipis, a native of Greece, came to the United States in 1954 to study electrical engineering and physics. He has a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in high-energy particle physics from Columbia University. He joined the Physics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966 and has been associated with the Institute since that time. He is presently Director of the Program in Science & Technology for International Security, which he co-founded in 1977. His research since 1973 has addressed the specific and technical aspects of strategic nuclear weapons, of efforts to limit them, and of the effects of nuclear detonations and nuclear war. He has conducted technical analyses of the new weapons systems such as particle beam and laser weapons, and cruise missiles, as well as verification systems and proposed nuclear arsenal reductions, aiming towards a rational defence policy and progress in arms control. He has written four books, the latest of which is "New Technologies, Defense Policy, and Arms Control"; authored more than 70 scientific papers; and edited seven other books on these topics. He has also emphasized informing and educating the general public about technical and scientific issues of defense policy and arms control; to this end he has written numerous newspaper and popular magazine articles, and appears frequently as a lecturer and on television. In 1984 he received the American Physical Society Leo Szilard Award. Dr. Tsipis is a member of the Board of Directors of the Council for a Livable World, the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists", the Peace Research and European Security Studies Institute in Stuttgart, and is founder and Chairman of the Board of the Greek Institute for International and Strategic Studies. He serves as scientific advisor to the Committee for East West Accord, Physicians for Social Responsibility (Boston), the Council on Economic Priorities, the World Council of Churches, Senator John Kerry's Arms Control Committee, the Center for War, Peace and the News Media, and the Greek government. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Academy of Science.