Dr. Nancy W. Gallagher is the Director of the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and a Research Professor in the School of Public Policy. Current research includes a book project on Strategic Logics for Arms Control; initiatives to enhance cybersecurity; and strategies to reduce nuclear risks, enhance space security and govern emerging technologies.
Gallagher is the author of The Politics of Verification (1999) and the editor of Arms Control: New Approaches to Theory and Policy (1998). She has co-authored five monographs: The Desirability and Feasibility of Strategic Trade Controls on Emerging Technologies (2023); Minimizing the Negative Effects of Advances in Military-Relevant Space Capabilities on Strategic Stability (2023); Comprehensive Nuclear Material Accounting (2014); Reconsidering the Rules for Space Security (2008); and Controlling Dangerous Pathogens (2007). Since 2014, Gallagher and colleagues have surveyed Iranian public opinion on nuclear policy, domestic politics and regional security. She has also written numerous governmental reports, policy articles and op eds.
Gallagher won UMD's 2015 Research Communication Impact Award; the Outstanding Invention of 2016 award for her development, with Charles Harry, of a cybersecurity risk analysis framework. She also received the 2021 Provost's award for excellence in research by a professional track faculty member.
Gallagher served as the executive director of the Clinton administration's Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Task Force and worked with the Special Advisor to the President and the Secretary of State to build bipartisan support for ratification. Gallagher worked at the State Department, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Wesleyan University.
- International security; arms control & nonproliferation; nuclear policy; cybersecurity; space security
The increasing integration of technology into the complex human processes they support poses a growing challenge to policy makers. While governments have increasingly focused on the range of strategic impacts cyber-attacks can generate, including significant disruptions to critical infrastructure, policy makers have struggled with ways to quantify risk these systems generate. This challenge arises in part by the inability to assess strategic impact across many independent but related organizations that support critical public services, as well as data to address the likelihood these events might occur.
Learn More about Identification and Management of Cyber Risk in Complex Organizations and Critical InfrastructureSchool Authors: Charles Harry, Nancy Gallagher
School Authors: Charles Harry, Nancy Gallagher
