Eliana Johns has spent the past few years counting nuclear weapons in far-flung places. Working from satellite imagery, government documents and other publicly available information, she helped produce some of the most widely cited open-source estimates of the world's nuclear arsenals. Now she is bringing that work, and the bigger questions it raises, to College Park as a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and as the eighth recipient of the Catherine M. Kelleher Fellowship for International Security Studies.
From open-source analysis to doctoral research
Before joining UMD, Johns was a senior research associate with the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). There, she co-authored the Nuclear Notebook, a highly respected reference on the status and trends of global nuclear forces. Her analyses have been cited by media outlets around the world, helping policymakers and the public make sense of how nuclear arsenals are changing. Earlier, she worked on counterproliferation initiatives at CRDF Global, supporting efforts to cut off revenue streams for North Korea's weapons programs.
That work showed her what careful, transparent analysis can do. "During my time at FAS, I saw firsthand how open-source analysis can shape policy by giving policymakers and the public the data they need to have informed debates about nuclear weapons," Eliana said.
It also left her with big questions that her previous education and professional training had not prepared her to answer. She decided to pursue a Ph.D. to study security policy "with greater depth and rigor and to ground my skills and experience in a stronger foundation of theory and research methodology."
The UMD School of Public Policy, with its interdisciplinary and applied orientation, was a natural choice. Johns pointed to the School’s "long tradition of promoting rigorous, policy-relevant research on nuclear weapons and international security and of bringing together technical and policy research in a way that few other programs do." That combination of technical depth and policy relevance was central to Kelleher's vision when she founded the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and characterizes some of the most important research produced there.
“Eliana was a natural choice for the Kelleher Fellowship,” said CISSM Director Nancy Gallagher, “due not only to her curiosity, intellect and enthusiasm, but also because of her commitment to providing open-source information about global nuclear programs so scholars, students and citizens without security clearances can be informed participants in security policy debates.”
A legacy measured in people
The fellowship honors emeritus professor Catherine McArdle Kelleher, a School of Public Policy founding faculty member, the creator and first director of CISSM, and the first president of Women in International Security (WIIS). A scholar of U.S. security relations with NATO and Russia, she served in the Clinton administration as defense adviser to the U.S. ambassador to NATO and as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.
Yet for all her own professional accomplishments, those who knew Kelleher personally tend to speak first about her investment in other people. Throughout her career, Kelleher opened doors for women and young scholars entering a field that was not always welcoming to them, and the network she built through WIIS continues to connect and support new generations of security professionals around the world.
The Kelleher Fellowship was created so that this kind of support would outlast her. It backs an exceptional graduate student in international security policy each year, with special consideration for those pursuing cooperative approaches to security challenges. Seven fellows have come before Johns, and together they form a growing cohort of scholars working on nuclear strategy, space security, emerging technology and global influence, each carrying a piece of Kelleher's legacy into their own work.
A lifelong dream
Johns describes the fellowship as both an honor and an opening. "Pursuing my education at the highest level has been a lifelong dream, and this fellowship makes it possible for me to realize that dream at the University of Maryland," she said.
She earned her bachelor's degree in political science, with minors in music and Korean, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She went on to study Korean through the U.S. Department of State's Critical Language Scholarship program, was named a 2025 CSIS Nuclear Scholar, and completed a master's degree in Georgetown University's Security Studies Program, focusing on the intersection of technology and security. She continues to serve as a research advisor to the FAS Nuclear Information Project.
At UMD, Johns will build on her background in remote sensing and open-source methods to examine how AI and other emerging technologies are reshaping nuclear forces and strategic stability. This research agenda sits squarely within the tradition Kelleher helped establish, grounded in evidence, attentive to how technology changes the strategic landscape and aimed at reducing risk rather than simply describing it.
Through my studies at UMD and beyond, I hope to carry forward Dr. Kelleher's legacy by not only creatively challenging conventional thinking about nuclear weapons policy but also by lifting up other young scholars in the field of international security studies.Eliana Johns 2026–2027 Kelleher Fellow
She is equally excited about the people she will learn alongside. The fellowship, she noted, offers not only the chance to pursue a Ph.D. but also "to join a collaborative and supportive cohort of like-minded peers." She looks forward, she said, to contributing to the public policy community at UMD and "helping to sustain the legacy of scholarship and service that this fellowship represents." That emphasis on community is one Dr. Kelleher would have recognized, and it is the part of her legacy Eliana most hopes to carry forward.
Past recipients of the Kelleher Fellowship include Samantha Custer, Sarah Erickson, Sanjana Gogna, Samuel Hickey, Lauren Samuelsen, and Lindsay Rand.
