Dr. Alison Tamasi

Chief of the Survivability and Effects Analysis Division U.S. Army Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Agency

Dr. Alison Tamasi is the Chief of the Survivability and Effects Analysis Division for the U.S. Army Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Agency (USANCA). Her division provides expertise and holistic coordination to inform Army leaders' decisions on multi-domain operational survivability of personnel, materiel, and comms in all WMD environments. She also leads the implementation of the Army's Biodefense Strategy to ensure that the Army can deploy, fight, and win decisively in a bio-contested environment. Prior to this she spent three years overseas serving as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's (DTRA) Liaison to Australia, where she was the sole U.S. Government representative for CWMD-related collaboration with Australian partners and worked closely with Australian Special Operations Command.

Dr. Tamasi has over 10 years of experience serving as a senior expert, technical advisor, scientific interlocutor, and focal point for scientific knowledge as it applies to weapons of mass destruction (including WMD development, design, manufacturing, effects, countermeasures, and methods of detection & analysis). She was awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Medal and the Joint Civilian Service Commendation for her exceptional contributions to the CWMD mission. Dr. Tamasi's expertise and experience spans the spectrum of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) science, as well as AI/ML, tech and threat forecasting, and all things challenging and interdisciplinary.

She has brought her creativity and insight to bear in a number of roles, including: providing scientific subject matter expertise and intelligence analysis for US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), the Department of Defense's Coordinating Authority for CWMD; developing innovative solutions to counter improvised threats as a member of the Novel Engineering Research & Development Solutions (NERDS) Team in DTRA's R&D Department; as Chief Scientist for reference laboratory operations at the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Analytical Radiation Environmental Laboratory where she co-founded the interagency Consequence Management Metrology Working Group in order to improve the accuracy and reliability of laboratory measurements following a radiological or nuclear emergency; as Radiochemistry Team Lead for the Air Force Technical Application Center's nuclear treaty monitoring mission; and conducting research in technical nuclear forensics of actinides (particularly uranium and plutonium) at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Dr. Tamasi received her PhD in Radiochemistry from the University of Missouri, where she was both a Nuclear Forensics Graduate Fellow and Seaborg Institute Fellow. She also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in both Chemistry and Biology from Florida Southern College, and is a certified Professional Futurist. She has extensive research publications, and has received awards for her work on the pre-detonation forensics of uranium compounds. Dr. Tamasi is also an accomplished evolutionary biologist, having spent time performing field spectroscopy on live Anolis lizards in the Caribbean. When Alison isn't home playing board games with her husband, Eric, she enjoys soaking up sunshine near the water (swimming, free diving, and whitewater rafting).