The Center is led by Janet Napolitano, who has a unique background as a former federal and state prosecutor, Arizona governor, and the nation’s longest-serving Secretary of Homeland Security. She also served as president of the University of California from 2013-2020.

The Berkeley Risk and Security Lab (BRSL), housed within the School of Information and the Center for Security in Politics at the Goldman School of Public Policy, engages with questions regarding 21st-century challenges using all of the tools in their analytical toolkit—from experiments to wargaming to large-n empirical analysis—to engage academics and policy experts from across campus asking and answering the big questions related to the future of national and international security.

To that end, the Lab’s researchers have pioneered new methods of scholarly inquiry, built entirely new datasets, and translated their academic work via engagement with thought leaders and policy-makers in Washington, DC, London, Geneva, Vienna, and across the globe.