Welcome! I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in Technology and International Security at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation in Washington, DC.

I study international relations and international security, with a particular focus on the interplay between conventional military strategy and nuclear deterrence in U.S.-led alliances. My book project, Deterrence without the Bomb: Explaining Military Postures of Non-Nuclear U.S. Allies, investigates how U.S. allies shape their military postures in different ways while relying on the U.S. security guarantee and nuclear umbrella. The project builds on my Ph.D. dissertation, which received the 2025 Lucian Pye Award for Best Doctoral Thesis in Political Science at MIT. 

My research broadly encompasses nuclear strategy, conventional military strategy, escalation dynamics, missile defense, and alliance politics. I draw on extensive fieldwork, archival research, elite interviews, and foreign-language (Korean, Japanese, and Chinese) sources in my research.

Previously, I was a Stanton Nuclear Security Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Project on Managing the Atom and the International Security Program, and a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center. My work has been supported by the Stanton Foundation, MIT Center for International Studies, Stand Together Foundation, Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies, and the Korea Foundation.

I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT, where I was also a member of its Security Studies Program. Prior to joining MIT, I earned a master's degree in China Studies (Politics and International Relations) from the Yenching Academy of Peking University, with support from the Bai Xian Asian Future Leaders Scholarship Program (AFLSP), and a B.A. in Government, magna cum laude, from Harvard University. I also completed 21 months of military service in the Republic of Korea Army—first in the Maintenance Battalion of the 25th Infantry Division, and later with the Republic of Korea Horizontal Military Engineering Company as part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) in Bor, Jonglei State.