Undraa
Agvaanluvsan, a visiting professor at the Center for
International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in Stanford, has
returned home after being appointed advisor to Mongolia’s Minister of Foreign
Affairs and Trade, G. Zandanshatar. She will work on nuclear-related issues as
well as Northeast Asian security and U.S. affairs.

She had recently completed
her tenure as deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies of the
National Security Council of Mongolia, and as director of the
Mongolian-American Scientific Research Center (MonAme) in Ulaanbaatar, a center
she helped establish that focuses on energy, the environment and
mineral-processing technologies.

Undraa did her bachelor’s
(1994) and master’s (1995) degrees in physics from the National University of
Mongolia, and a diploma in high energy physics in 1997 from the International
Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. She earned her doctorate in
2002 from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, studying nuclear
reactions and quantum chaos in nuclei. Following that, she conducted
postdoctoral research work in the Nuclear Experimental Physics group at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She has published and co-authored
several dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals.

At Stanford, Undraa conducted
research in nuclear energy policy and international security issues concurrent
with the expansion of civilian nuclear energy. She also taught a course titled,
“Contemporary Issues in Nuclear Energy Policy” in the International Policy
Studies program.