About
Dr. Bethany Goldblum is an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and faculty scientist in the Nuclear Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She leads the Bay Area Neutron Group, a research team focused on applied nuclear physics for nuclear security applications. Goldblum also serves as Executive Director of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, a $25M grant established by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration to train the next generation of nuclear security experts. Her research focuses on fundamental and applied nuclear physics, neutron detection, scintillator characterization, artificial intelligence and machine learning applications for nuclear science, and nuclear weapons policy.
Goldblum founded and directs the Nuclear Policy Working Group, an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate and graduate students focused on developing policy solutions to strengthen global nuclear security. In this role, she has regular contact with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Project on Nuclear Issues, and other organizations concerned with nuclear policy. She is an affiliate researcher at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and has been involved with the Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Boot Camp nearly since its inception, acting as director of the program since 2013. The Boot Camp brings together prominent academics, National Laboratory scientists, and State Department officials to provide an intensive training in both the technical and policy aspects of nuclear nonproliferation.
Goldblum received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007 with perfect marks. She served as a Clare Boothe Luce Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Berkeley before joining the nuclear engineering faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in August 2010. In January 2012, she returned to Berkeley as a member of the research faculty. She maintains active collaborations with the US DOE National Laboratories, and is an affiliate at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories. Goldblum was recipient of the 2020 Corones Award in Leadership, Community Building and Communication.
In the News
- Keeping watch on nuclear weapons – “With her hand in a few different research projects, ranging from nuclear weapons detection to wargame simulations on social media, Bethany Goldblum also finds time to direct and establish groups whose aim is to shape nuclear security policy.”
- How a video game could help us better understand nuclear war – Popular Science, 2023
- ARPA-E program brings diagnostics to fusion companies – Physics Today, 2022
- Panel of experts discusses nuclear threats, potential ‘doomsday’ – Daily Cal, 2020
- Neutrino detectors could be used to spot nuclear rogues – Wired, 2020
- Bringing out the science of wargames – Berkeley Engineering, 2019