Elisa D. Harris is a Distinguished Fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center. She has served as a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), where her research has focused on biosecurity issues, including health security and cooperative approaches to controlling highly dangerous pathogens. She has also been a Consultant to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where she led a project on dual-use technologies in the nuclear, cyber and biotechnology fields. From 1993 to 2001, she was Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls on the White House National Security Council staff, where she had primary responsibility for coordinating US policy on chemical, biological and missile proliferation issues.

Ms. Harris has held a number of research positions, including in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in London and the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She is a former SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow in International Peace and Security Studies and staff consultant to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives.

Ms. Harris is the author or editor of over two dozen publications on biosecurity, dual-use technology, and chemical and biological weapons proliferation and arms control issues, including Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2016). She has testified frequently before the US Congress and delivered statements to meetings of the World Health Organization, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Institutes of Health, and the Biological Weapons Convention Experts Group. She has an A.B. in Government from Georgetown University and an M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University.