Dr. Michael J. Frankel is Executive Director of the EMP Commission and one of the nation’s leading experts on the effects of nuclear weapons. Formerly he served as Associate Director for Advanced Energetics and Nuclear Weapons, Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (S&T); Chief Scientist, Nuclear Phenomenology Division, Defense Threat Reduction Agency; Congressional Fellow, US Senate; Chief Scientist, Strategic Defense Initiative Organization Lethality Program; and as a Research Physicist at the Naval Surface Weapons Center, White Oak. In prior government service, Dr. Frankel directed significant elements of the core national Nuclear Weapons Phenomenology program along with major WMD, Directed Energy, and Space System technology programs at the Defense Nuclear Agency while coordinating activities between the military Services, National Laboratories, and industrial S&T organizations to address strategic defense technology needs. He has been an active participant in international scientific exchanges in his role as Executive Secretary for the US – United Kingdom Joint Working Group under terms of the 1958 Atomic Treaty, and as Chairman of both the Novel Energetics and Hard Target Defeat working groups under the TTCP agreement with the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. He has also delivered invited lectures, chaired national and international technical symposia, and published numerous articles in the professional scientific literature. He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from New York University.