Program in Science, Technology and Society
450 Serra Mall, Building 370
Stanford, CA 94305-2120

rslayton@stanford.edu
(650) 725-0123 (voice)
(650) 725-5389 (fax)

Research Interests
Cold War; missile defense; nuclear weapons; defense policy; ethics;

Rebecca Slayton is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Stanford University and a former CISAC affiliate. In 2004-2005 she was a CISAC science fellow. Her research examines how technical judgments are generated, taken up, and given significance in international security contexts. She is currently working on a book which uses the history of the U.S. ballistic missile defense program to study the relationships between and among technology, expertise, and the media. Portions of this work have been published in journals such as History and Technology and have been presented at academic conferences. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2004 she completed an NSF-funded project entitled Public Science: Discourse about the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983-1988.

As a physical chemist, she developed ultrafast laser experiments in condensed matter systems and published several articles in physics journals. She also received the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2000, and has worked as a science journalist for a daily paper and for Physical Review Focus. She earned her doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University in 2002.

(Profile last updated in September 2011.)

Other affiliations
Program in Science, Technology and Society