Alex
Wellerstein

Assistant Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology

Alex received a PhD in the history of science from Harvard University in 2010, and a BA in history from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Managing the Atom Project and International Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2010 to 2011. He is currently working to complete his book on the history of nuclear secrecy in the United States, from the Manhattan Project through the War on Terror, under contract with the University of Chicago Press. He is the author of Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog, the creator of the online NUKEMAP nuclear weapons effects simulator, an occasional contributor to The New Yorker’s Elements Blog, has had articles published in the Washington Post, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, Science, and Nature, and his work has been featured on a variety of popular news and media outlets, including The Daily Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live. He is a co-PI on the Reinventing Civil Defense Project, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

I’m most excited to work on projects that… bridge disciplinary domains and have impacts on the general public and culture.

I’m looking for partners that can help me… find funding for these kinds of hybrid, broad-scoped projects.

A moment when I felt most inspired in my work was… when I began to take Civil Defense more seriously as a powerful cultural phenomena, and not just dismiss it as amusing nonsense.

Innovations in my field I’m most excited to work on… involve the creation of new genres of public outreach.

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