Participants and Biographies

Nabil Fahmy (Egypt) is presently Ambassador at Large at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry after completing his post as Ambassador of Egypt to the United States from October 1999 to September 2008, Since returning to Egypt he has also served as Chair of the Monterey Center for Nonproliferation Study’s Nuclear Non Proliferation Project .He also served as Egypt’s Ambassador to Japan from September 1997-September 1999 and before that as the Political Advisor to the Foreign Minister and has held numerous posts in the Egyptian Government. Ambassador Fahmy is a career diplomat who has played an active role in the numerous efforts to bring peace to the Middle East, as well as in international and regional disarmament affairs.He headed the Egyptian delegation to the Middle East Peace Process Steering Committee in 1993 and the Egyptian delegation to the Multilateral Working Group on Regional Security and Arms Control emanating from the Madrid Peace Conference from December 1991. Over the years, Ambassador Fahmy has been a member of the Egyptian Missions to the United Nations (Disarmament and Political Affairs) in Geneva and New York . He was elected Vice Chairman of the First Committee on Disarmament and International Security Affairs of the 44th Session of the UN General Assembly in 1986. And from 1999 until 2003, he was a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board of Disarmament Matters where he served as its chairman in 2001. Nabil Fahmy has written extensively on Middle East politics, peacemaking and regional security and disarmament. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics/Mathematics and his Master of Arts in Management, both from the American University in Cairo.

Mohamed Reda Farahat (Egypt) is the former Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Egypt to Guinea Bissau. In 1959, he received a B.A. in English from Cairo University. He went on to receive a Diploma of Tourism from the Higher Institute of Tourism in Cairo, an M.A. in Mass Communication from the American University in Cairo, and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Sussex. In Ambassador Farahat’s capacity as Alternate Representative of the State of Qatar to International Organizations in Vienna from 1975–1981, he participated in high-level international meetings and specialized UN Conferences. Before his Ambassadorship, Ambassador Farahat served Egypt as a diplomatic attaché, third secretary, second secretary, then counsellor in a variety of countries, including El Salvador, Burma, and China. He also served as First Secretary, Seconded by MFA to the State of Qatar & posted to the Qatari Embassy in Vienna as Alternate Permanent Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) & Other U.N. Agencies based in Vienna.

Marc Finaud (France), holds an MA in International Law of the University of Aix-en- Provence (1975) and he is a Graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (1977). He joined the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1977. His main positions included: Vice-Consul in Leningrad (USSR) (1977-1978); Desk Officer for the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) (1979-1982); Adviser to the Secretary- General of the Foreign Ministry (1982-1983); First Secretary in Warsaw (1984-1987); Secretary-General of the Delegation to the CSCE Meeting in Vienna (1987-1988); Counsellor at the Delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva (1989- 1993); Head of the Information Department at the Foreign Ministry (1993-1996); Deputy Head of Mission in Tel Aviv and Member of the Team of Negotiators of the EU Special Envoy on the Middle East Peace Process (1996-2000); Consul-General in Sydney (2001-2004). He is seconded to the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) since 2004 as Director of Short Courses. He has published articles and books in English and French about disarmament, the Middle-East peace process and international humanitarian law. Mr. Finaud is currently the Director of Short Courses at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP).

Jennifer Fishkin (US) is affiliated to Cornell University’s School Industrial Labor Relations. She specializes in International Relations and Near Eastern Studies. Jennifer joined Team Iran- Cornell in fall 2008. She interned at the Hudson Institute in 2007 and conducted research on Russian Foreign Policy in Iran and Turkey. She speaks French and did research at Futurbulences, a French public policy think tank in Paris during Spring 2009. Currently intern at the Policy Analysis and Public Diplomacy desk of the Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs, US State Department.

Mark Fitzpatrick (US) is Senior Fellow for Non-Proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and director of the IISS Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme. He is the author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding worst-case outcomes (London: Routledge for IISS, 2008) and the editor and principal author of IISS strategic dossiers on Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A.Q. Khan and the Rise of Proliferation Networks (2007) and Nuclear programmes in the Middle East: In the shadow of Iran (2008). Before joining IISS in 2005, he served for 26 years in the US Foreign Service, where he spent the last ten years of his career focussed on non-proliferation issues, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Non-Proliferation (acting). He earned a Master’s in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He is a frequent commentator on BBC and other global news outlets and has published articles on nuclear issues in many reputable journals and media resources.

Geoffrey Forden (US) has been at MIT since 2000 where his research includes the analysis of Russian and Chinese space systems as well as trying to understand how proliferators acquire the know-how and industrial infrastructure to produce weapons of mass destruction. In 2002- 2003, Dr. Forden spent a year on leave from MIT serving as the first Chief of Multidiscipline Analysis Section for UNMOVIC, the UN agency responsible for verifying and monitoring the dismantlement of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Previous to coming to MIT, he was a strategic weapons analyst in the National Security Division of the Congressional Budget Office after having worked at a number of international particle accelerator centers.

David Friedman (United States) is currently conducting an internship with the Arab Institute for Security Studies in Amman, Jordan. He is a affiliated to Georgetown University in Washington DC, studying Arabic & Islamic Studies and Government with a concentration in International Relations. In the past, he has worked for the Senate Office of Hillary Clinton and the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University.

Michael Gaul (Germany, NATO) is the Head of the Defence and Security Economics Directorate at the Political Affairs and Security Policy Division at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. After graduating in law studies at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität and getting the diploma in Second State (Bar) Examination in Law and a traineeship at the Federal Employment Service in Neurenberg Mr. Gaul started his career in 1989 and became a Judge (public prosecutor) at the Ministry of Justice in Mainz, where he worked until 1991. In 1991 Mr. Gaul started working as Senior Official at the Federal Ministry of Finance of the German Government and was in charge of management administration, budgetary control and privatization of state-owned enterprises, as well as economic restructuring in the context of the German reunification process and advising the transition countries in CEE and NIS on economic reform, management, conversion and privatization. From 1998 to 2005 Mr Gaul was Counsellor at the Permanent Delegation of the Federal Republic of Germany to NATO, where he dealt with NATO-wide financial policy, budgetary, economic and management issues. In 2004 Mr. Gaul was elected as Chairman, NATO Budget Committees. He chaired in this capacity the Military Budget Committee and the Civil Budget Committee and was a member of the NATO Senior Resource Board. In this function Mr. Gaul reported directly to the North Atlantic Council and provided advice on budgetary matters. Since 2007 Mr. Gaul is the Head of the Defence and Participants Biographies 68 Security Economics Directorate at the Political Affairs and Security Policy Division at NATO and responsible for security economic-related issues, energy security, retraining programmes and partner cooperation in the area of defence reform. In addition to his work Mr. Gaul has acted as a member of several Supervisory Councils in Berlin, Moscow and Bonn and has undertaken numerous consulting and evaluation activities on issues relating to economic restructuring. Mr Gaul has also co-published a book about Policy of Privatization and Public Management Administration – Experiences gained in Western Germany.

Annalisa Giannella (Italy, EU) started her career as a European official in 1972, gaining a wide range of experience in all areas of European policies. She worked on European Community matters until March 1994 in the fields of environmental protection and internal market (financial services and company law, among others). She participated in international negotiations in various configurations, and she was in charge of the Secretariat for the EEC-Switzerland agreement on insurance, the Lugano Convention with the EFTA countries on recognition and execution of judicial decisions, and of the international Bankruptcy Convention. In 1994 she began her professional activity in the areas of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). First as Head of Division for Security issues and from September 1999, as Director for Security and Defence Policy. In this capacity she contributed to the development of the ESDP. From February 2002 to August 2003, Mrs. Giannella was appointed Deputy Secretary-General to the European Convention. On 10 October 2003, the High Representative for CFSP, Javier Solana, appointed her as his Personal Representative for non-proliferation of WMD to co-ordinate, help implement and further develop the EU WMD Strategy, and to give sharper focus to these issues in the dialogue with third countries. Today, her office is also responsible for the implementation of the EU SALW Strategy, adopted in 2005, and assists EU Member States in their efforts to coordinate policies in the area of conventional arms exports controls. Concerning negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme, her office has assisted, since Autumn 2004, the High Representative for CFSP and the three EU Member States (Germany, France and the United Kingdom) which started these difficult endeavours.

Nilsu Goren (Turkey) is a Turkish scholar who studies nuclear proliferation issues and currently teaches World Civilizations at Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey. She got her BA in Economics and MA in Political Science from Sabanci University in 2004 and 2006, where later she worked as a teaching assistant and project development specialist. In 2005-2006 she joined the Washington D.C. office of Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), and has been writing articles for CNS publications ever since.

Muna Hadidi (Jordan) is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the University of Jordan. This Faculty coordinates and upgrades graduate academic policies and programs offered by all colleges of the University. Dr. Hadidi joined the University of Jordan as an assistant professor of special education in 1985. She was promoted to professor of special education in 1998. Her research interests include: visual impairments, teacher training and professional development, quality assurance in graduate education programs, early childhood education and intervention, and women with disabilities. She served as the Dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences from 2002-2006, and as Head of the Department of Counseling and Special Education from 1995-1997. She has taught various undergraduate and graduate courses and supervised many Master’s and doctoral theses. Dr. Hadidi is a member of many professional organizations and scientific committees, she published several textbooks and research papers in educational journals. She has participated in many local, regional, and international conferences and provided several consultations to ministries of education and social development in Jordan and other Arab countries, and has implemented many training workshops in various areas of special education. She holds a PhD in special education from the Ohio State University, a Masters of Education in Special Education form the Michigan State University, and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing from the University of Jordan.

Ahmed Abdullah Hiyassat (Jordan) is the director of the Jordan National Electric Power Company. Dr. Hiyassat is a Senior Member of IEEE, and a Distinguished Member of CIGRE. Prior to his current position at the National Electric Power Company, Dr. Hiyassat worked in various capacities and leadership roles at the Jordanian Electricity Commission. He was elected as the president of the coordination committee for electricity establishment in the Mediterranean. Dr. Hiyassat has a number of papers and published research articles published in local, Arab and international resources. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Moscow in 1983.