Lucas Arthur is a Technical Associate in the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy. He is from just outside of Palmer, Alaska, and received his S.B. degree in physics with a minor in political science from MIT in 2021. Lucas is interested in the security ramifications of emerging technologies and how to mitigate existential threats. He works primarily on arms control and disarmament, ballistic missile guidance, and advanced sensing, but maintains a wider interest in the intersection of information theory, computation, and physical systems. He is also the content advisor for the Alice Kimball Smith Series on science, technology, ethics, and global affairs at Yale University. When not working on research, he can often be found hiking, climbing, or trail running.
I had the great pleasure of meeting Lucas Arthur through a wonderful common friend, Talia Weiss, who remains the prototype, as Lucas does, of people whom I admire, for having both extraordinary quantitative and qualitative skills. Lucas is the communicative glue between Sandenna McMaster and myself, both having hailed from the same town in Alaska, and both having a passion for the outdoors. I had the pleasure of introducing Lucas Arthur to David Rubin, the founding president of Dartmouth College’s Pugwash, where Lucas lectured on his current research and modernizing the US Nuclear Triad. Lucas currently works at the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy, headed by Scott Kemp, making Lucas and his work an invaluable asset for young Pugwashians. I introduced Lucas to Professor Dick Lanza in our efforts to stimulate and create an MIT Pugwash chapter.
