CDDRL Fellow, J. Alexander Thier will discuss Afghanistan's experiences with nation building, particularly in the post-Taliban era. J Alexander Thier was legal advisor to Afghanistan's Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions in Kabul in 2003-2004, where he assisted in the development of a new constitution and judicial system. In 2002 Alex worked in Kabul as a Constitutional and Legal expert to the British Department for International Development, and as Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Sherri G. Kraham joined the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in March 2004 as its Director of Development Policy, working on a broad range of policy issues related to MCC's innovative approach to development. Ms. Kraham, a lawyer, transferred from the U.S. Department of State where she worked overseeing and implementing various U.S. Foreign Assistance including development, peacekeeping and security, humanitarian assistance, and human rights programs. She spent several years working on programs related to Iraq and prior to joining MCC, Ms. Kraham deployed to Baghdad working with the Coalition Provisional Authority as part of the first civilian team that worked on reconstruction following the war.

About the Millenium Challenge Corporation: President George W. Bush established the Millenium Challenge Account in order to link greater contributions from developed nations to greater responsibility from developing nations. The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)is designed to concretely link assitance to performance by providing aid to those countries that rule justly, invest in their people, and encourage economic freedom. With strong bipartisan support, Congress authorized the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to administer the MCA and provided $1 billion in initial funding for FY04. President Bush's request for the MCA in FY 2005 was $2.5 billion of which Congress appropriated $1.5 billion. The President has pledged to increase funding for the MCA to $5 billion in the future.

Alexander H. Montgomery is a joint International Security Program/Managing the Atom Project Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Political Science PhD candidate at Stanford University. He has a BA in Physics from the University of Chicago, an MA in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in Sociology from Stanford University. He has worked as a research associate in high energy physics on the BaBar experiment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as a graduate research assistant at the Center for International Security Affairs at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His research interests include political organizations, weapons of mass disruption and destruction, social studies of technology, and interstate social relations. His dissertation asks the question, "What US post-Cold War counterproliferation strategies towards potential nuclear states have been successful and why?"

Greater China is the most rapidly growing region in both production and market share in the semiconductor industry, and Chinese professionals play increasingly important roles for the development in the region. SPRIE/ITRI cooperated with CASPA in conducting a study to assess the perspectives of Chinese professionals on the rise of the IC industry in Greater China, and exploring the factors influencing their movement decisions. This panel will present a preview of data from the 2005 web-based survey and interviews--preliminary results, insights from the interviews, and potential implications for professionals, corporate managers, and policymakers.

CASPA: Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association. With more than 3500 members and 10 chapters distributed across US and Asia, CASPA is the largest Chinese American semiconductor professional organization worldwide.

ITRI: Industrial Technology Research Institute. ITRI is a major industrial technology research institute in Taiwan, with more than 6,000 employees and annual budget around $US 5 billion. Many major Taiwanese semiconductor companies, such as TSMC and UMC, are ITRI spin-offs.

Charles Kartman has served since May 2001 as the Executive Director of KEDO, an international consortium established in 1995 to manage a $4.6 billion energy project in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Prior to that he was U.S. Special Envoy for the Korean Peace Talks and concurrently served as U.S. Representative to and Chairman of KEDO's Executive Board, until retiring from the Department of State in April 2001. From June 1996, Ambassador Kartman was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He was Acting Assistant Secretary for much of 1997. He had previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Director for Korean Affairs at the Department of State in Washington, and Political Counselor in Seoul.

Ambassador Kartman is recognized for his expertise on Northeast Asia, having earlier specialized on Japanese affairs, working as a political officer in the Embassy in Tokyo, Consul General in Sapporo, and twice in the office of Japanese Affairs at the Department of State. Ambassador Kartman also held a variety of other positions focused on Asia: in the Department on politico-military Affairs; for the Under Secretary for Political Affairs; and on loan to the Congress.

Mr. Kartman joined the State Department in 1975, after completion of a graduate program at Georgetown University. In his 26-year career, he received the Department's highest honors: a multiple winner of the Department's Superior Honor Award, the James Clement Dunn Award for outstanding service, the Secretary's Distinguished Honor Award, and the Secretary's Distinguished Service Award. He is married to Mary Kartman, a fellow graduate of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. They have two daughters.

A buffet lunch will be available to those who RSVP by Tuesday, February 22 to Debbie Warren at dawarren@stanford.edu or at 650-723-2408.

This seminar is part of the North Korea Seminar Series hosted by the Walter Shorenstein Forum.

Major Reid Sawyer, a career military intelligence officer, is an instructor of political science at the United States Military Academy. As an intelligence officer, Major Sawyer served in counternarcotics and special operations assignments. Major Sawyer earned his undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy and holds a master's degree from Columbia University. Major Sawyer has lectured on terrorism to various groups and is currently working on a research project for the Institute of National Security Studies on the efficacy of counterterrorism measures. Major Sawyer is the current director of terrorism studies at West Point.

On November 15, 2005, the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is required by law to submit a recommendation to the parliament on how Canada should manage its spent nuclear reactor fuel. NWMO, which came into existence on November 15, 2002, is undertaking a creative and iterative process engaging the technical, political, and public communities in arriving at their recommendation. As an integral part of the process, NWMO established an assessment team to develop an analytical framework and a systematic method for evaluating and comparing options. Isaacs, one of two non-Canadian members of the team, will describe the ongoing work with emphasis on the multi-attribute utility analysis that was developed to evaluate the options against a range of technical, economic, and social issues.

Tom Isaacs directs the policy and planning activities of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is a member of advisory committees for Oregon State University and Texas A&M University nuclear engineering departments.

Isaacs was a member of the National Research Council committee that produced "One Step at a Time: The Staged Development of Geologic Repositories for High-Level Radioactive Waste," and was a member of the NRC Committee on Building a Long-Term Environmental Quality Research and Development Program in the U.S. Department of Energy.

He was chairman of the Expert Group on Nuclear Education and Training, a 17-nation evaluation sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris. He served on the DOE Science Advisory Committee for Environmental Management. He was a member of the "Blue-Ribbon Panel" on the Future of University Nuclear Engineering Programs and University Research and Training Reactors for the Department of Energy.

Previously, Isaacs was the Executive Director of the advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy and the White House which made recommendations on the need for nuclear regulatory reform in the DOE. He also held several management positions in the High-Level Radioactive Waste Program of the DOE, including Director of Strategic Planning and International Programs, Director of Policy and External Relations, and Deputy Director of the Office of Geologic Repositories. He managed the multi-attribute utility analysis that underpinned the selection of Yucca Mountain as the U.S. repository site.

Isaacs also managed the international technical cooperative program with several European nations and Canada. He was the lead U.S. delegate to the Nuclear Energy Agency's Radioactive Waste Management Committee in Paris and represented the Department with the National Academy of Sciences.

Earlier, Isaacs was Deputy Director of the DOE Office of Safeguards and Security with responsibility for national policy formulation and technical leadership in federal actions to minimize prospects of nuclear proliferation, including establishing the program of technical assistance to the International Atomic Energy Agency for safeguarding nuclear facilities worldwide. He began his career with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission where he helped oversee the design of the reactor core of the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF).

Isaacs graduated with a BS degree in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and was a member of the Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honor Society. He received an MS in engineering and applied physics from Harvard University.