Faculty

Phil Potter

Dr. Philip Potter is a Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the National Security Policy Center in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He is also a University Expert with the National Ground Intelligence Center, US Army INSCOM. Dr. Potter has published two books and articles in a wide array of peer reviewed and popular outlets. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Politics and the Journal of Global Security Studies and is an Associate Principal Investigator for Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS). Professor Potter has been a fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Donald E. Brown

  • Olsson Hall, Room 102C

Dr. Brown is Founding Director of the Data Science Institute, the W.S. Calcott Professor of the Department of Systems and Information Engineering and Co-Director of the Translational Health Institute of Virginia, University of Virginia. Prior to joining the University of Virginia, Dr. Brown served as an officer in the U.S. Army and later worked at Vector Research, Inc. on projects in medical information processing and multi-sensor surveillance systems. He is now President of Commonwealth Computer Research, Inc. which provides data analysis and technical services for numerous private and governmental organizations. He serves on the National Research Council Committee on Transportation Security has served on the National Academy of Sciences panel on High Performance Computing and Crisis Management and on the NRC Committee on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Security. He is a past member of the Joint Directors of Laboratories Group on Data Fusion and a former Fellow at the National Institute of Justice Crime Mapping Research Center.

Dr. Brown has been a principal investigator or co-principal investigator for over 90 research contracts with federal, state, and private organizations. He has over 120 published papers and two edited books. His research focuses on data fusion, knowledge discovery, and predictive modeling with applications to security and safety.

Dr. Brown is a Fellow of the IEEE and a past President of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society. He is the recipient of the Norbert Wiener Award for Outstanding Research in the areas of systems engineering, data fusion, and information analysis. He has also received an Outstanding Contribution Award from that society and the IEEE Millennium Medal. The student chapter of the International Council on Systems Engineering has named him the best undergraduate teacher three years in a row (2001, 2002, and 2003). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transaction on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans . He has served on the administrative committee of the IEEE Neural Networks Council. He is coeditor of the books, Operations Research and Artificial Intelligence: The Integration of Problem Solving Strategies and Intelligent Scheduling Systems. He is also past-Chairman of the Operations Research Society of America Technical Section on Artificial Intelligence and he is the recipient of the Outstanding Service Award from that Society. Dr. Brown’s students have won competitions in the Omega Rho honor society, the IEEE, the Brunswick Society, and the Operations Research Society of America.

Alison Criss

Alison Criss is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology in the School of Medicine. Dr. Criss’s laboratory investigates how pathogenic microorganisms manipulate the immune system in order to cause disease, focusing on the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae, an antibiotic-resistant “superbug” that infects hundreds of millions of people worldwide each year. The ultimate goal of this research is to identify targets in the host or pathogen for developing vaccines and new antimicrobial drugs, while preventing sterility and other negative outcomes associated with the inflammatory response to infection. This research is supported by the National Institutes of Health and local and statewide sources of funding. Dr. Criss’ honors include the American Society for Microbiology / Interscience Conference for Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy Young Investigator Award, the School of Medicine Dean’s Awards for Excellence in Research and in Teaching, election to the UVA Academy of Distinguished Educators, and selection as a UVA Pinn Scholar. At UVA, Dr. Criss serves on the Executive Committee of the NIH-sponsored Infectious Diseases Training Grant and the Advisory Committee for the Biomedical Data Sciences Training Grant. She serves on the editorial boards of several journals, was editor of the Thematic Issue on Pathogenic Neisseria in the journal Pathogens and Disease (2017), has been on organizing committees of international scientific conferences, and is Chair of the 2019 Mid-Atlantic Microbial Pathogenesis Meeting. Criss Lab Website

Jack W. Davidson

  • Rice Hall 428

Jack W. Davidson is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. He joined the faculty in 1981 after receiving his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Arizona. Professor Davidson’s research interests include compilers, computer security, programming languages, computer architecture, and embedded systems. He is the principal investigator on several ongoing grants to develop comprehensive methods for protecting software from malicious attacks.

Professor Davidson is a Fellow of the ACM and a Senior Member of the IEEE Computer Society. He served as an Associate Editor of ACM’s Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems for six years, and as an Associate Editor of ACM’s Transactions on Architecture and Compiler Optimizations for eight years. He served as Chair of ACM’s Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) from 2005 to 2007. He currently serves on the ACM Executive Council and is co-chair of ACM’s Publication Board that oversees all aspects of ACM’s publications and the operation of ACM’s Digital Library.

Professor Davidson is co-author of two best-selling introductory programming textbooks, C++ Program Design: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming, 3rd edition and Java 5.0 Program Design: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming, 2nd edition. He and his colleague, James P. Cohoon, received the 2008 IEEE Taylor L. Booth Award for their sustained effort to transform introductory computer science education.

Ashley Deeks

  • WB373

Ashley Deeks is the E. James Kelly, Jr.-Class of 1965 Research Professor at the University of Virginia Law School. Her primary research and teaching interests are in the areas of international law, national security, intelligence, and the laws of war. Earlier she served as the assistant legal adviser for political-military affairs in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser. She serves on the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law and the Board of Editors for the American Journal of International Law. She is the supervising editor of AJIL Unbound and is a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog.

Kirsten Gelsdorf

  • Garrett L028

As Director of Global Humanitarian Policy, Kirsten brings 19 years of experience working in the humanitarian sector; most recently serving as the Chief of the Policy Analysis and Innovation section at the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. She has led major policy processes and authored numerous high-profile policy reports documents that have been implemented by Member States and adopted in key UN resolutions.

Harry Harding

  • Garrett L030

Harry Harding is a specialist on Asia and U.S.-Asian relations. Presently a University Professor and Professor of Public Policy at UVA, he also holds a concurrent appointment as Visiting Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he is senior advisor to the Institute on Public Policy and an instructor in its senior executive education program for the Hong Kong government on leadership and public policy.

David Leblang

  • Garrett 102

David Leblang is Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and is a Faculty Associate at the Miller Center where he is the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance. He is also a Professor of Public Policy at the University’s Batten School for Leadership and Public Policy where he is Director of the Global Policy Center. Since 2010 he has served as Department Chair of the Department of Politics.

Thomas B. Nachbar

  • WB309

After earning his undergraduate degree in history and economics, Tom Nachbar spent five years as a systems analyst, working for both Andersen Consulting and Hughes Space and Communications before entering law school, where he served on the University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and later practiced with what is now Mayer Brown in Chicago as a member of the firm’s appellate litigation, information technology and intellectual property practice groups.

Nachbar’s research focuses on the nature of regulation: how the law is used (and by whom) to shape and control behavior. His early work addressed how the availability of new technologies alters conceptions of regulation. His current work is on the relationship between public and private regulation. Throughout, his work has retained a focus on the regulation of markets and networks. He has written extensively on the history of trade regulation, from mercantilist England through 20th-century America, with an emphasis on the constitutional dimensions of trade regulation. His work on network regulation ranges from study of common law, common-carriage obligations to regulation of the Internet. He has both practiced and published in the field of telecommunications law (he authored, with Glen Robinson, the casebook Communications Regulation), and is an expert on the Supreme Court’s constitutional equal protection and due process jurisprudence.

Nachbar also works in national security. He teaches and writes on cybersecurity, with an emphasis on security of communication networks and the connection between network security and private industry. He is the convener of the Stanton Series on Liberty and Security — an annual meeting of leaders in industry, government, academia and civil society to discuss the issues they face and foresee in the relationship between the free flow of information and national security — which is organized and hosted by the Law School each spring and sponsored by the Stanton Foundation. He is a judge advocate in the U.S. Army Reserve, where he has, among other assignments, edited an Army handbook on the development of legal systems, trained Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and deployed to Iraq. He is a senior fellow at the Center for National Security Law, a faculty affiliate of the National Security Policy Center at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and a member of the Board of Advisors of the University of Virginia Applied Research Institute.

John M. Owen IV

  • S465 Gibson Hall

John M. Owen IV is Ambassador Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics, and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. His newest book is Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West’s Past (Princeton, 2014). He is author of The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510-2010 (Princeton, 2010), and of Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Cornell, 1997), and co-editor of Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order (Columbia, 2011). He has published in the European Journal of International Relations, Foreign Affairs, International Organization, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, National Interest, New York Times, Perspectives on Politics, and a number of edited volumes. Currently he is working on two research projects: “Soft Power, America, and the Future of International Order” and “Fifth Columns in Peace and War.” Owen holds an A.B. from Duke University, an M.P.A. from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has held fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Oxford universities. His research has been supported by grants from the Mellon, MacArthur, Donchian, Earhart, and Smith Richardson foundations and the Army Research Laboratory. From July 2011 through June 2014 he was Editor-in-Chief of Security Studies. He is on the editorial board of that journal and of International Security. In 2015-16 he received a Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and spent the academic year at the Free University of Berlin and the WZB Berlin Social Science Research Center.

Allan C. Stam

  • Garrett 107

Allan C. Stam was the former dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on the dynamics of armed conflict between and within states. He is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and in 2007 he was a residential fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Gerald Warburg

  • Garrett 102

Gerry Warburg is a Professor of Practice and teaches courses at the Batten School on Congress, U.S. foreign policy and advocacy strategies. His research interests include the study of best practices by non-governmental organizations and the evolution of U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policies. Warburg’s professional background encompasses a broad array of public service. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President of Cassidy &Associates, a leading government relations firm. Prior to that position, he worked as a legislative assistant for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives under Senate Whip Alan Cranston and Representative Jonathan Bingham.