Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zürich

Dr. Alexander K. Bollfrass is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich. He was previously a Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Alex was a nuclear weapons policy researcher at the Washington-​based Arms Control Association and Stimson Center, before earning a Ph.D. in security studies from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

One part of his archival research agenda compares how well intelligence agencies perform in assessing other countries’ nuclear programs. Another part investigates hidden barriers to the spread of nuclear technologies. In parallel, Alex explores how climate affects civil wars and the ethical dilemmas of serving the security state.

Mauro Gilli is a Senior Researcher in Military Technology and International Security. Before joining CSS, he was a post-​doctoral fellow at the Dickey Center, Dartmouth College.

His research interests include security studies, military innovations, political economy of national security, and asymmetric wars. He is currently working on a book manuscript whose provisional title is “Military-​Technological Superiority: Explaining Failure and Success in Industrial Espionage, Reverse Engineering and Imitation of Advanced Weapon Systems.” He received his PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University in 2015.

Dr. Stephen Herzog is Senior Researcher in Nuclear Arms Control at the ETH Zurich Center for Security Studies. He is also a member of the Uppsala University Alva Myrdal Centre for Nuclear Disarmament Working Group on Negotiations and co-chairs the Beyond Nuclear Deterrence Working Group for the Harvard University Project on Managing the Atom. 

He has published widely in venues ranging from International Security, the Nonproliferation Review, and Survival to Arms Control Today, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the Financial Times. A former U.S. Department of Energy nuclear arms control official and Federation of American Scientists researcher, Stephen holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University.

Dr. Dominika Kunertova joined CSS’s Global Security Team in June 2020 as Senior Researcher, where she reads, writes, and comments on the geopolitics of emerging and disruptive technologies, military robotics, and transatlantic security and defence cooperation. She was also a NATO Partner Country Director of the “Vulnerabilities of the Drone Age” project, funded by the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme in 2020-21. 

Before think-tanking at CSS, she conducted strategic foresight at NATO Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, supported capability development at NATO HQ in Brussels, and mapped the European military drone landscape at Center for War Studies in Denmark. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Université de Montréal in Canada.

Névine Schepers is a Senior Researcher in the Swiss and Euro-​Atlantic Security Team at the Center for Security

Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich. She is also co-​editor of the monthly policy brief series CSS Analyses in Security Policy.

Before joining the CSS in 2020, Névine worked at the London-​based think tanks the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and VERTIC on non-​proliferation and nuclear policy. She holds a Dual Master’s Degree in European and Asian Affairs from the universities of Sciences Po in Paris and Fudan in Shanghai.

Oliver Thränert is head of think tank at the Center for Security Studies (CSS). He also is “Non-​Resident Senior Fellowˮ at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik). Oliver Thränert studied Political Science, Modern History and Sociology and received his Doctorate from the Technical University of Braunschweig/Germany in 1986. 

From 1986 to 2001, Oliver Thränert served in the Research Institute of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn (until 1999) and Berlin as a political analyst. In 2001, he joined the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)) in Berlin, where he chaired the Research Group for International Security from 2002 to 2008. In addition, he lectured at the TU Darmstadt (1990 to 1994) and the Free University Berlin (2002) and was a visiting scholar at Queen’s University in Kingston/Ontario (1991).

Sophie Reiners is a Senior Researcher in the Swiss and Euro-​Atlantic Security Team at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich. Her areas of research are focused on Dual-​Use Research of Concern in Chemistry and Life Sciences. She also helps organizing together with Spiez Laboratory the biennial Spiez CONVERGENCE workshop that reviews the latest advances in science and technology and how they may affect the regimes governing the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons. Before joining the CSS in 2022, Sophie worked as a forensic scientist in Basel and Luxembourg. Sophie holds an MSc in Forensic Science specializing in Chemical Criminalistics from the University of Lausanne.