Dr Lora Saalman

Dr Lora Saalman is a Senior Researcher within SIPRI’s Armament and Disarmament and Conflict, Peace and Security research areas. She also serves as a Member of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) and as an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the East-West Center (EWC). Her research focuses on China’s cyber, nuclear and advanced conventional weapon developments in relation to India, Russia and the United States.

Formerly she served as vice president of the Asia-Pacific Program at the EastWest Institute and as director of the China and Global Security Programme at SIPRI. She has also worked at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, Tsinghua University, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Observer Research Foundation, and Center for Nonproliferation Studies from which she earned a one-year fellowship at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Dr Saalman was among the first batch of recipients of the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellowship. She earned her bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Chicago, her master’s degree with a certificate in nonproliferation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and her Ph.D. with an outstanding graduate student award and dissertation award from Tsinghua University, where she was the first American to earn a doctorate from its Department of International Relations, completing all of her coursework in Chinese.