Suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians were once the favored tactic of Palestinian terrorists. Israeli deaths from suicide bombings peaked in the spring of 2002, but Israeli countermeasures dramatically lowered the number of successful suicide bombings since then. This talk will assess the impact of various countermeasures on suicide bombing rates with an eye towards understanding the decline in successful suicide bombings in Israel.

Edward H. Kaplan is the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences at the Yale School of Management, a professor of public health at the Yale School of Medicine, and professor of engineering in the Yale Faculty of Engineering. An elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, Kaplan uses operations research and statistical methods to study problems in public policy and management. His earlier work was devoted to evaluating HIV prevention programs, while his more recent studies focus on counterterror topics such as the tactical prevention of suicide bombings and response logistics in the event of a bioterror attack. He has also dabbled in predicting the outcomes of presidential elections and NCAA basketball tournaments. His efforts have been recognized with several awards in the fields of operations research and public health.

Executive Director of UNAIDS since its creation in 1995 and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr. Peter Piot comes from a distinguished academic and scientific career focusing on AIDS and women's health in the developing world.

Drawing on his skills as a scientist, manager, and activist, Dr. Piot has challenged world leaders to view AIDS in the context of social and economic development as well as security.

Under his leadership, UNAIDS has become the chief advocate of worldwide action against AIDS. It has brought together ten organizations of the United Nations system around a common agenda on AIDS, spearheading UN reform.

Dr. Piot earned a medical degree from the University of Ghent, a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Antwerp, Belgium and was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle. After graduating from medical school, Dr. Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976.

In the 1980s, Dr. Piot launched and expanded a series of collaborative projects in Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zaire. Projet SIDA (Project AIDS) in Kinshasa, Zaire, was the first international project on AIDS in Africa and is widely acknowledged as having provided the foundations of our understanding of HIV infection in Africa. He was a professor of microbiology, and of public health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, and the Universities of Nairobi, Brussels, and Lausanne.

In 1992, Dr. Piot joined the Global Programme on AIDS of the World Health Organization, in Geneva, as Associate Director.

Born in 1949 in Belgium, Dr. Piot is fluent in three languages and is the author of 16 books and more than 500 scientific articles. He has received numerous awards for scientific and societal achievement, and was made a Baron by King Albert II of Belgium in 1995. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, UK.

For more information about Dr. Piot, read "The Life of a Virus Hunter" from Newsweek's special edition of May 15, 2006, AIDS at 25.

Dr. David Heymann is the Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases and Representative of the Director-General for Polio Eradication. From July 1998 until July 2003, he was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster. Dr. Heymann was Director of the WHO Programme on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases from October 1995 to July 1998, and prior to that was the Chief of research activities in the WHO Global Programme on AIDS. Before joining WHO, Dr. Heymann worked for thirteen years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa on assignment from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He also worked for two years in India as a medical epidemiologist in the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme.

Dr. Heymann holds a B.A. from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.D. from Wake Forest University, a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has completed practical epidemiology training in the two-year Epidemic Intelligence Service of CDC. In 2004, he received the American Public Health Association Award for Excellence and was named to the United States Institute of Medicine. In 2005, he was awarded a Welling Professorship at the George Washington University School of Public Health and the 2005 Donald Mackay medal by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Dr. Linton was born in Philadelphia in 1950 and grew up in Korea, where his father was a third generation Presbyterian missionary. He is a visiting associate of the Korea Institute, Harvard University, for 2006-07. Linton is currently Chairman of The Eugene Bell Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that provides humanitarian aid to North Korea.

Dr. Linton's talk will focus on the Eugene Bell Foundation and its programs. Named for Rev. Eugene Bell, Lintonn's great-grandfather and a missionary who arrived in Korea in 1895, the Foundation serves as a conduit for a wide spectrum of business, governmental, religious and social organizations as well as individuals who are interested in promoting programs that benefit the sick and suffering of North Korea.

Since 1995, the Foundation strives primarily to bring medical treatment facilities in North Korea together with donors as partners in a combined effort to fight deadly diseases such as tuberculosis (TB). In 2005, the North Korean ministry of Public Health officially asked the Foundation to expand its work to include support programs for local hospitals. The Foundation currently coordinates the delivery of TB medication, diagnostic equipment, and supplies to one third of the North Korean population and approximately forty North Korean treatment facilities (hospitals and care centers).

Dr. Linton's credentials include: thirty years of teaching and research on Korea, twenty years of travel to North Korea (over fifty trips since 1979), and ten years of humanitarian aid work in North Korea. Dr. Linton received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, a Masters of Divinity from Korea Theological Seminary, and a Masters of Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Korean Studies from Columbia University.

This public lecture is part of the conference "Public Diplomacy, Counterpublics, and the Asia Pacific." This conference is co-sponsored by The Asia Society Northern California; The Japan Society of Northern California; Business for Diplomatic Action; Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University; and the Taiwan Democracy Program in the Center on Democracy Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.