Last updated Fall 2012.
Ambassador Undraa Agvaanluvsan is a native of Mongolia. She is currently the Director of the Board Members at the Mongolian-American Scientific Research Center in Mongolia. She has served on several advisory roles for the Mongolian government on issues of nuclear sector development and is still actively collaborating with CISAC scholars on nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation in Asia. She received her bachelor's (1994) and master's (1995) degrees in physics from the National University of Mongolia, and a diploma in high energy physics at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy in 1997. She obtained her PhD in 2002 at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, studying nuclear reactions and quantum chaos in nuclei. Following completion of her doctorate, she conducted postdoctoral research work in the Nuclear Experimental Physics group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She published and co-authored several dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals.
In the past several years, Dr. Agvaanluvsan's research interests have broadened to include policy studies. In the policy arena, she served as an adviser to Mongolia's Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 2010, she was apponted as an Ambassador-at-large on nuclear energy issues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Mongolia.
Dr. Agvaanluvsan was a CISAC science fellow and visiting professor during 2008-2010, and an affiliate from 2010 to today. Her research interests at CISAC focused on nuclear energy studies. More specifically, she studied uranium mining and processing, front-end issues of the nuclear fuel-cycle, nuclear fuel supplies, and nuclear energy policy. Using her prior experience with scientific research in quantum chaos, she worked with CISAC colleague
Kate Marvel to study the resiliency of the electricity grid network when stressed with the addition of more power sources, including nuclear power generation.
At Stanford, Dr. Agvaanluvsan directed an undergraduate research project under the auspices of the Bing Overseas Studies Program. She also taught nuclear energy policy in the International Policy Studies program.
