Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
Gerold Yonas, PhD has had a long and distinguished scientific and managerial career. He worked as a staff scientist at JPL from 1962 to 1967 and was Manager of Electron Beam Research at Phys Intl from 1967 to 1972. He worked at the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) from 1972 to 2009 where he initiated the pulsed power fusion program, served as vice president of Systems, Science and Technology, and later became SNL’s principal scientist. He also served from 1984 to 1986 as the acting deputy director and chief scientist of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
He joined the University of New Mexico’s (UNM’s) Mind Research Network in 2009 as the director of neurosystems engineering. There he dedicated himself to develop this new field, linking advances in neuroscience with systems engineering through interdisciplinary teams that focused on the development of solutions to complex system problems.
He has also served on several defense boards and is a Senior Fellow at the Potomac institute for Policy Studies. He has also taught in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UNM, and has published extensively in the fields of intense particle beams, inertial confinement fusion, strategic defense technologies, technology transfer, and “wicked engineering.” He has authored the mostly-fictional novels “The Dragon’s CLAW” and “The Dragon’s Brain,” and the non-fiction book “Death Rays and Delusions” (with Jill Gibson). Dr. Yonas received his PhD in engineering science and physics at the California Institute of Technology and bachelor’s degree at Cornell University.