My current assignment is in the Arms Control, Verification & Compliance Bureau, Office of Verification &
Transparency (AVC/VTT) within the US Department of State. The core mission for AVC concerns, “arms control, verification and compliance with international arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements or commitments.” Within AVC, VTT “leads the Bureau in identifying technological solutions for verification and compliance issues for current and future arms control challenges, thereby enabling policy choices.” In this sense, my office overlaps both the technical and policy side of arms control, and it is suited for the engineer who can bridge the gap between science and diplomacy. The office also controls the “V-fund,” a seed fund that finances forward-looking technology to solve future arms control problems.
My first task was to review ideas submitted to AVC from a public “ideation challenge” in arms control.
This call asked the general public to submit innovative ideas using information technology to support arms control. After reviewing a large number of submissions, the participating staff convened and decided on the strongest contenders of whom three were selected for a monetary prize.
I served an important role of technical liaison to the DOE Office of Science laboratories resulting in a much greater pool of proposals addressing the wide range of technical needs of the Bureau. While several laboratories interacted regularly with AVC, many were not aware of their needs or that they had a funding mechanism. Thus, the proposals received tended to be limited to several players, and Acting
Undersecretary Gottemoeller wanted to draw concepts from a greater pool of scientists both within the laboratory complex and beyond. Even though I was severely restricted in travel due to sequestration, I was nevertheless able to network to the appropriate people within most of the laboratories including
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Idaho National Laboratory
(INL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory (SNL), Oak Ridge National
Laboratory (ORNL), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), as well as other non-DOE labs. Interaction was facilitated by the fact that some labs were already interacting with VTT, and others had representatives for other programs in the DC area who were willing to spend some time meeting with VTT.
Several outcomes were readily apparent from my interaction with external researchers. First, many of the smaller laboratories submitted proposals to the V-Fund call. Second, the range of concepts was expanded considerably by having the participation of researchers from different disciplines. Finally, a review of past V-Fund projects held in March was widely attended by those wishing to learn about AVC and discover what projects were funded in the past.
Early in my fellowship, I was invited to lecture at the Department of Engineering and Science Mechanics at Pennsylvania State University. I feel it is important to engage future engineers to give them options

for their career, and I welcomed the opportunity to lecture on the convergence of technology and policy. As an example, I used the relation between the space race, driven by technology, and the nuclear arms race, driven by policy decisions, to illustrate the important role engineers and scientists played in shaping post-war history. Students were enthusiastic, and the lecture was well attended with over 50 attending. Many students came away with an expanded view of their career options. My thanks to
Professor Akhlesh Lakhtakia for his kind invitation and gracious hosting as well as to other members of
ESM.
My success at Penn State spurred me to look for other opportunities to engage both students and faculty in the subject of engineering diplomacy, and I was subsequently invited to speak at George
Mason University. The lecture was well received as they realized, perhaps due to their proximity to DC, the overlap between technology and policy. I took the occasion to speak with the faculty as well and describe the V-fund, and I was presented with many interesting technology concepts in development at
GMU. I decided to invite my host, Dr. Kenneth Gabriel, to speak with our office.
Other outcomes and activities included:
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Connected a need for VTT to test an airborne sensor platform with a facility in which to fly at the
Oak Ridge National Laboratory facilities thus saving time and cost to the project.
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Connected VTT with the appropriate Department of Energy classification office to identify unclassified sections that could be published within the unclassified V-fund Broad Agency
Announcement. Such an approach was useful to provide for greater access to the agency needs and potentially a larger pool of submitted proposals going forward.
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Connected with an office in the Defense Advanced Projects Agency and hosted a program manager to discuss overlapping efforts and approaches to some of the future challenges as being explored by the Department of Defense.
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Visited the Office of Science and Technology Advisor to the President (OSTP) to discuss concepts on facilitating an improved process to connect science and technology to relevant government funding agencies.
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Served as a reviewer for several proposals submitted to the National Nuclear Security
Administration’s Office of Proliferation Detection (NA221).
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Hosted a fellow AAAS member to speak to VTT regarding a systems approach to national security.
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Met with the Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) to discuss the potential for overlapping funding opportunities and hosted a meeting at State.
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Contributed to an OSTP fellow’s effort to simplify business access to instrumentation in the US:
“Access to instruments to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship.”
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Reviewed a Master’s thesis for a VTT colleague as well as contributed some research papers to support her thesis.
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Attended the JASON advisory group meeting.
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Participated in synthetic biology meetings at State.
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Attended the Japan Climate Change symposium.

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Participated in an African Materials Working Group targeted held at the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research (AFOSR).
I additionally took advantage of the many training opportunities offered through the State Department to broaden my understanding of the government process including: Intelligence and Foreign Policy,
Foundations of International Law, Washington Tradecraft, an introductory course in negotiation, as well as the basic week long Civil Service Orientation. Other learning opportunities I attended were offered through AAAS including seminars in time management, negotiation, and integrity in science. All seminars had exceptional speakers, and I regretted having to miss any.
I have continued my role as a researcher by exploring a technical need of the Bureau. The results of my current research will be presented in the International Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) meeting in July as well as published as a larger exploratory research paper later in the year. Early on in my fellowship I was also invited to submit a journal paper based on previous work that my colleagues and I at PNNL had presented at last year’s INMM meeting. We are currently collaborating on a paper in response to this invitation. My sincere thanks to the IEEE for allowing me access to their technical database (IEEE Xplore).
In summary, the IEEE Engineering and Diplomacy fellowship has provided an outstanding opportunity to interact with State and other government agencies, and I look forward to continuing to advance the role of the engineer in shaping public policy.
Kyle J. Bunch, PhD, PE