Dr. Lauren J. Borja

Dr. Lauren J. Borja is fellow at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She is also an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University.

Her research focuses on high energy laser directed energy weapons. Specifically, Dr. Borja investigates the implications of the range of their possible uses from tactical to space to missile defense. She is also interested in issues in emerging technology and the role of science and technology in national security.

She was a 2019–2020 Stanton Nuclear Security postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and a Simons postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs from 2017–2019. In 2016, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in physical chemistry. She was part of the NSquare Innovators Network (Cohort 3).

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Recent Publications

• “High Energy Laser Directed Energy Weapons: Military Doctrine and Implications for Warfare,” CGSR Student National Security Seminar (June 2022).
• “Command and Control of India’s Nuclear Arsenal,” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament (May 2020). Authored with M.V. Ramana.
• “Secrecy and Deniability in the Nuclear Realm,” Center for International Security and Cooperation (February 2020). Panel presentation with Debak Das and Reid Pauly.
• “Assessing Priorities towards Achieving Dependable and Secure Computing in the U.S. ICBM Force,” Science & Global Security (December 2019).
• “Indian Nuclear Command and Control: A History and Recent Developments,” 31st International Summer Symposium on Science and World Affairs (August 2019).
• “Missing from the 2019 Missile Defense Review: Cybersecurity,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (February 2019).
• “Direct and simultaneous observation of ultrafast electron and hole dynamics in germanium,” Nature Communications (June 2017). Authored with Michael Zürch, Hung-Tzu Chan, et al.
• “Extreme ultraviolet transient absorption of solids from femtosecond to attosecond timescales,” Journal of the Optical Society of America B (2016). Authored with Michael Zürch, Chaitnanya D. Pemmaraju, et al.