Dr. Deborah Yarsike Ball leads the Dynamic Network Assessment Group (DNAG) in the Global Security Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. DNAG seeks to discover and characterize networks of state and non-state actors intent on creating and using WMD. Dr. Ball is also the political science group leader in the National Security Analysis Division. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has been a fellow at Harvard University's Center for Science and International Affairs, as well as Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control. Dr. Ball is a political-military and cultural analyst. She is still involved in research on the prevention of theft of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material from the former Soviet Union, as well as the safety and security of Russia’s weapons of mass destruction. Previous work focused on Russian civil-military relations, military doctrine, and security issues. Dr. Ball also conducts analysis of various regimes’ internal and external political and social behavior, and their holistic use of the elements of power and influence.
Ball’s publications include: “Russian Scientists and Rogue States” in International Security (Spring 2005, with Theodore Gerber), “The State of Russian Science: Focus Groups with Nuclear Physicists,” Post Soviet Affairs (July-September 2002, with Theodore Gerber), “The Social Crisis of the Russian Military,” in “Russia’s Torn Safety Nets” (Ed. by Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg, St. Martins, 2000), and “How Safe Is Russia’s Nuclear Arsenal?” in Jane’s Intelligence Review (December 1999). She is currently a member of the Advisory Board for Annual Editions: World Politics (McGraw-Hill Publisher). Among her committee assignments, Dr. Ball has served on a U.S. National Academy of Sciences Committee tasked to assess the “Indigenization of U.S. Programs to Prevent Leakage of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium from Russia.”