About

Biography

I am a political scientist who studies the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons to state and non-state actors, global biorisk management, and the impact of emerging technologies on international security. I am an Associate Professor and Director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. The Biodefense Graduate Program is a multidisciplinary research and education program designed to prepare students to work on issues at the nexus of health, science, and security and bridge the gap between science and policy. We offer graduate certificates, an MS in Biodefense (including an online-only option), and a PhD in Biodefense. I am also an Associate Faculty at the Center for Security Policy Studies at George Mason and the Editor-in-Chief of The Pandora Report, an online weekly newsletter that covers biodefense and global health security. I am co-director of the Global BioLabs Initiative that tracks high containment laboratories and biorisk management policies around the world. I am also a member of the Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Security at the Center for Arms Control and Non- Proliferation and the Security Working Group of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC). I serve as a pro bono advisor for the Open Society Justice Initiative’s project on accountability for Syrian use of chemical weapons and as a member of the Biothreat Advisory Board of Elusys Therapeutics, a biodefense medical countermeasure company. Prior to arriving at George Mason, I was a visiting assistant professor in the School of Foreign Service and Department of Government at Georgetown University. Previously, I worked for the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I am the author of Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age (Council on Foreign Relations, 2014) and Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security (Cornell University Press, 2009) and co-author of Global Biolabs Report 2023 (King’s College London and George Mason University, 2023), Mapping Maximum Biological Containment Labs Globally (King’s College London and George Mason University, 2021), Editing Biosecurity: Needs and Strategies for Governing Genome Editing (George Mason University and Stanford University, 2018), and Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1998). I received a PhD in political science from the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Contact

Feel free to send me an email at gkoblent@gmu.edu. You can also contact me via Twitter or LinkedIn.