The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) is Stanford University’s hub for researchers tackling some of the world's most pressing security and international cooperation issues.
Founded 30 years ago, CISAC in its early years brought together scholars focused on U.S.-Soviet-China relations, arms control and nonproliferation, and the scientific and technical aspects of international security. Today we are building on our historic strengths to seek solutions to the many longstanding and emerging challenges associated with an increasingly complex world.
We are guided by our longstanding belief that a commitment to rigorous scholarship, openness to new ideas, and lively intellectual exchange can spur the creation and spread of knowledge to help build a safer world.
Among those are cybersecurity, war and civil conflict, migration and transnational flows, public health and biosecurity, international norms and ethics, as well as insurgency, terrorism, homeland security and nuclear proliferation. CISAC’s multidisciplinary community brings together social scientists, historians, lawyers, physical and biological scientists, engineers, as well as leaders from the private sector and the world of public policy.
Through education, scholarship and Track II diplomacy, CISAC strives to influence the policymaking agenda in the United States and abroad. We are guided in this effort by our longstanding belief that a commitment to rigorous scholarship, openness to new ideas, and lively intellectual exchange can spur the creation and spread of knowledge to help build a safer world.
CISAC's current co-directors are David Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine and of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford School of Medicine; and Amy Zegart, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Political Science (by courtesy). CISAC's founding co-directors were political scientist John Lewis and physicist Sidney D. Drell.
Learn more about CISAC from the co-directors, and more about our research areas:
David Holloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History; Senior Fellow; Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studie (FSI); CISAC Faculty Member; and Affiliated Faculty at the Europe Center and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (committee chair)
Alex Aiken, Alcatel-Lucent Professor in Communications and Networking;Department Chair of the Computer Science Department
Kenneth Arrow, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics (emeritus), and Professor of Operations Research (emeritus)
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar (ex officio), former CISAC co-director, former FSI Director, and current associate justice of California Supreme Court
Jenny Martinez, Associate Dean for Curriculum, Professor of Law, Warren Christopher in the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy
Norman M. Naimark, Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies, Department of History; CISAC Affiliated Faculty Member; Europe Center Research Affiliate and FSI Senior Fellow by courtesy
David Relman (ex officio), CISAC Co-Director; the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine and of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford School of Medicine; FSI Senior Fellow
Lee D. Ross, Professor of Psychology
Lucy Shapiro, the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professor of Developmental Biology at the Stanford School of Medicine; Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Amy Zegart (ex officio), CISAC Co-Director; Davies Family Senior Fellow and Associate Director of Academic Affairs, Hoover Institution; Professor of Political Science (by courtesy).