Director, Science Diplomacy Center at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

Professor Paul Arthur Berkman is building connections between science, diplomacy and information technologies to promote cooperation and prevent conflict, balancing national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth across generations.  He became a Visiting Professor at the University of California Los Angeles at the age of 23, after wintering the previous year in Antarctica on a SCUBA research expedition with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, leading him to all seven continents before the age of thirty.  During the intervening years, Paul received his masters and doctorate as a National Science Foundation graduate fellow at the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island.  A decade later, he wrote the textbook on Science Into Policy.  He was a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar and Head of the Arctic Ocean Geopolitics Programme at the University of Cambridge, chairing the Antarctic Treaty Summit at the Smithsonian Institution in 2009, resulting in the first book on Science Diplomacy.  He chaired and co-directed the first formal NATO-Russia dialogue the following year regarding Environmental Security in the Arctic Ocean, with its legacy through a Springer book of the same name generating more than 50,000 downloads as well as presentations to the full NATO Maritime Command, Storting in Norway and during the four Arctic forums with Vladimir Putin from 2010-2017.  He currently coordinates the Arctic Options and Pan-Arctic Options projects (involving support from national science agencies in the United States, Russian Federation, Norway, France, China and Canada from 2013-2020) as well as a Carnegie Corporation project on US-Russia Relations.  In September 2015, he joined the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy as Professor of Practice in Science Diplomacy and now is Director of the Science Diplomacy Center at Tufts University, which is the first center in an academic institution dedicated to science diplomacy, especially its practice and applications without advocacy.