The Energy and Security Initiative (ESI) promotes interdisciplinary, inter-university, and international research in the field of energy and security; facilitates faculty and student collaboration and networking; and educates government officials, policymakers, and members of the public about important issues at the nexus of energy and security. Project PIs Bill Boettcher and Mark Nance received a catalytic workshop grant from the International Studies Association for a project titled “A New Security Dilemma? Politics and Policy at the Energy-Security Nexus.” This project involving academics and practitioners will produce eight papers on a variety of topics—the politics of oil regulation and investment, nuclear proliferation and governance, energy as geopolitics, and the construction of energy threats—designed to produce a special issue of a policy journal. In Spring 2014, with the collaboration of ESI faculty, NC State’s Department of Nuclear Engineering was awarded a five-year, $25 million grant by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development to develop the next generation of leaders with practical experience in technical fields relevant to nuclear nonproliferation. A final success for 2013-14 was the hiring of two new faculty members that are expected to make strong contributions to the ESI program-Professor Kathleen Vogel from Cornell and Robert Reardon from Harvard.
