MIT Professor Vipin Narang Takes Over as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy

MIT nuclear science professor Vipin Narang was sworn in on March 28 as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy. He will work as deputy to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Dr. John Plumb. The office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy is responsible for interagency coordination and international engagement on space policy and strategy, which includes nuclear, cyber, and missile defense policy. Narang, the Frank Stanton Professor of Nuclear Security and Political Science is currently on leave from MIT to serve in the Department of Defense. 

Apart from being a professor at MIT, Narang is also a member of the Security Studies Program at the Center for International Studies, his MIT profile says. His research interests include nuclear proliferation and strategy, North Korea’s nuclear weapons, South Asian security, and general security studies.

His first book “Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era” (Princeton University Press, 2014) on the deterrence strategies of regional nuclear powers won the 2015 ISA International Security Studies Section Best Book Award. His second book “Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation” (Princeton University Press) was published in early 2022. He was the recipient of the 2020 ISSS Emerging Scholar Award from the International Studies Association awarded to the scholar who “had made the most significant contribution to the field of security studies.”

Born in the San Francisco Bay area, Narang received his Ph.D. from the Department of Government, Harvard University in 2010. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in chemical engineering with distinction from Stanford University and an M. Phil with Distinction in international relations from Balliol College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Marshall Scholarship. 

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He has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, a predoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a Stanton junior faculty fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

(Top photo, courtesy MIT News)