Vipin Narang, an Indian-American political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), announced on Tuesday, 29 March, that he is "taking a public service leave" from the university because he is to be sworn in as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy.
It is a high level civilian post in the United States Department of Defense. Narang's work, according to his tweet, will include "nuclear, cyber, and missile defence policy".
Born in the San Francisco Bay area in the United States to parents of Indian descent, Narang was the Frank Stanton Professor of Nuclear Security and Political Science at MIT, and he was also a member of the university's Security Studies Program.
He earned his PhD in 2010 from the Department of Government, Harvard University.
He holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in chemical engineering with distinction from Stanford University.
Additionally, he earned an M Phil with Distinction in international relations from Oxford University, where he was enrolled on a Marshall Scholarship.
His research expertise is nuclear proliferation and strategy (especially with respect to North Korea), and South Asian security.
He has written and published two books:
Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (2014)
Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation (2022)
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