Li Bin

Li Bin  received his Bachelor and Master Degrees in Physics from Peking University in 1985 and 1988, respectively.  In 1990, he entered the Graduate School of China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP) to study arms control.  At the same time, he worked as a part-time technical assitant at the Committee of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND, now called General Equipment Department).  During the period when Li Bin was at the CAEP Graduate School, his research focus was the technical aspects of controlling laser weapons for missile defense.  In 1993, he received his Ph.D. in physics and entered the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM) as a research fellow and shifted his research focus to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).  He then joined the COSTIND technical group that supported the Chinese CTBT Negotiating Team in Geneva.  One year later, in 1994, Dr. Li received a two-year Post-doctoral Fellowship on Peace and Security in a Changing Word awarded by the Social Science Research Council / MacArthur Foundation.  Under the support of this fellowship, he spent his first year at the Defense and Arms Control Studies Program (now the Security Studies Program), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to undergo training in international relations and other arms control-related areas.  He spent his second year at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University, where he continued his research on CTBT, missile proliferation and missile defense.      After Dr. Li went back to IAPCM in the summer of 1996, he was appointed as a senior research fellow.  In late July, 1996, when the last round of CTBT negotiations began, he was sent to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva as a technical advisor to the Chinese CTBT Negotiating Team.  After the conclusion of the CTBT, Dr. Li went back to IAPCM and set up a division in IAPCM to study the technical aspects of arms control.  He was appointed as the director of this division and also the executive deputy director of the Program for Science and National Security Studies (PSNSS).  PSNSS was established in 1988 and is the first group of Chinese scientists working on arms control.      In 1999, Dr. Li left IAPCM to establish an academic research center, Institute of Science and Public Affairs based at China Youth College for Political Science.  The Institute takes a technical approach to study issues in international peace, security and development.  Li Bin’s work at the Institute is funded by the Ploughshares Fund.  Dr. Li is now moving to the Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University to be an associate professor and will direct the Arms Control Program at the Institute.     Since 1990, Dr. Li has been working on various issues including constraining laser weapons for missile defense, the nuclear test ban, missile defenses, deep nuclear reductions and the Missile Technology Control Regime.  His current research interests include: deep nuclear reductions, no-first-use of nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defense and the Missile Technology Control Regime. Studies of Princeton University.