Sam Nunn School Chair Joe Bankoff recently visited in China to give talks and meet with faculty at the China European International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai and at Zhejiang University School of Economics in Hangshou. Professor Bankoff was invited to speak to faculty and students on "Innovation, Intellectual Property and China's New Economy." Building on his article and talk presented last fall in Shenzhen at the Economic Development Conference he outlined his views on the importance of China's current emphasis on creating credible enforcement of intellectual property rights. He also visited with representatives of the People's Supreme Court working on the creation of the new IPR Courts that were authorized last year.

While at CEIBS Professor Bankoff visited with Dr. Gary Liu - Executive Director of the Shanghai Institute of Digitalization and Internet Finance and with Professor Tim Tian Zhu, Chair of the Department of Economics and Decision Science. He also met with Dean XUE Lan of the Tsinghau University School of Public Policy and Management to explore opportunities for potential exchanges of students and faculty. Tsinghau historically has played an important role in influencing policy in China.

At the 7th Information & Communication Technologies & Development Conference held May 15-18 in Singapore, Georgia Tech was well represented. PhD candidate, Amanda Meng (INTA) presented a plenary session paper, "Twitter Democracy: Policy versus Identity Politics in Three Emerging African Democracies" co-authored with Dr. Michael Best. Fellow graduate students, Michael Madaio (MS Digital Media) and Paul Lazarus (MS HCI) presented notes on the Liberian iLab and Social Media Tracking of Elections in Ekiti, Nigeria respectively.

Dr. Kirk Bowman, Jon R. Wilcox Term Professor and Professor of International Affairs, is taking his students to Argentina and Uruguay this summer, studying politics, economics, culture, and soccer along the way. First stop: Montevideo!

Asst. Prof. Margaret E. Kosal was an invited speaker at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency(DTRA) 2015 Chemical and Biological Defense Science and Technology Conference, held 12-14 May in St. Louis MO. She spoke on “Big Data, Social Media, and Chem-Bio Events” on the use of data analytics and social media for nonproliferation, verification, and detection of chemical and biological events ranging from chemical and biological warfare agents to terrorism and emerging infectious diseases. Kosal was also an invited speaker on a special panel on “Threat Forecasting, Technology Watching, and Horizon Scanning.”

Dr. Katja Weber's Southeast Asia Study Abroad program is making video documentaries to capture their time there. Here is their first video - a look at Laos.

Professor Brian Woodall travels from Tokyo to Sendai every Wednesday to teach his “Japanese Government & Politics” course in the Law School at Tōhoku University. Here he is posing with the students, who include a nice mixture of Japanese and international students. U.S. News & World Report lists Tōhoku University as Japan’s fourth ranked “global university.” The university’s campus is picturesque and Sendai is a lovely, vibrant city.

On May 27, Professor Lawrence Rubin delivered a lecture titled: "Balancing the Brotherhood: Regime Security in the post-Arab spring" at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island as part of the Great Middle East Regional Study Group. The lecture drew on some of his previous work and focused on the domestic and foreign policies of Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the last five years.

Professor Jenna Jordan's talk explores findings from her current book manuscript focusing on the leadership decapitation of terrorist organizations. Using an original database of over 800 instances of leadership attacks, case studies, and a social network analysis of al-Qaeda, the book evaluates the efficacy of leadership targeting as a counterterrorism strategy. She has also conducted research on population transfers, attachment to territory, suicide terrorism, organizational splintering, social network analysis of clandestine organizations, Pakistani political violence, illicit nuclear trade, and international relations theory.

Check out the video here! 

Congratulations to our Georgia Tech Model United Nations (GTMUN) program, who finished in the top 75 of Best Delegate's year-end collegiate Model UN rankings! This is the second year in a row our team has been ranked. Our team is looking forward to hosting our High School conference in the fall.

Professor Rubin participated in a number of events at Aarhus University. On May 7, he took part in a panel discussion, "International Relations and the New Middle East" hosted by the graduate student organization, IP-NU. This event, attended by two hundred students, was moderated by Prof. Morten Valbjorn and included Professors Rubin, Etel Soligen (Univ. of California, Irvine), Pinar Bilgen (Bilkent University) and Gregory Gause (Texas A&M). On May 7-8, Prof. Rubin participated in a workshop on the International Relations of the New Middle East, sponsored by the Project on Middle East Political Science and Aarhus University. The workshop featured distinguished scholars from the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Rubin presented a paper titled, "Balancing the Brotherhood and the Crisis of ISIS."

Dr. Seymour Goodman presented “A Landscape for Cybersecurity Policy Education,” as the plenary presentation at the 2015 International Security Education Workshop, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, May 18-19, 2015. There were about 150 participants from all over the US and the world. The workshop was funded by Intel and the NSF.

On May 1-2 scholars from America and Europe participated in the workshop “Triangular Diplomacy and the Crisis in Ukraine: The European Union, The United States and the Russian Federation” at Georgia Tech. The workshop explored the initial reactions of the US and the EU to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine; how Russia has responded to that reaction; and how their reactions are viewed from Ukraine. These actor perspectives were complemented by analyses of cross-cutting issues – the imposition and effectiveness of sanctions and rival invocations of international law – and examinations of the cultures and identities underpinning the actors’ positions. This project is distinctive in that it involves an explicitly comparative analysis of foreign policies and adopts a 360⁰ perspective. The papers are being revised for publication in an edited volume. The workshop was sponsored by the European Union through Georgia Tech’s Jean Monnet Center of Excellence.

Two former Fulbrighters and life-long friends were in Atlanta on May 17th. Dr Jennie Lincoln arrived in Costa Rica as a Fulbright professor at the same time Luis Guillermo Solis returned home from Fulbright studies in Michigan decades ago. They taught political science at the University of Costa Rica and stayed in touch across the miles and the years. President Solis is in Atlanta with a delegation of business representatives to explore connections for Costa Rica.

Alasdair Young, Associate Professor of International Affairs and Jean Monnet Chair, gave a talk on the distinctive politics of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations at the U.S. Department of State on Monday, 18 May 2015.