Stephen M. Younger is Vice President and Chief Technologist of Northrop Grumman Technical Services. He is also a senior policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC,a faculty member at the University of Hawaii, and an adjunct faculty member at the University of New Mexico.

In early 2012, he retired as president of National Security Technologies, LLC, the manager and operator of the Nevada National Security Site with satellite facilities in California, New Mexico, Nevada, Hawaii, Washington, D.C., and Germany.  During this time, he transformed the operations of the Site by the introduction of innovative business practices and a new focus on arms control and nonproliferation.

From 2004-2006, he was a senior fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he pioneered the application of multi-agent-simulation to the study of violence and warfare in small societies.

From 2001 to 2004, Younger was the director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a component of the U.S. Department of Defense whose mission is to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction.  His oversight responsibilities included arms control inspections, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, advanced weapons development, chemical and biological defense programs, and operations in Iraq.

Prior to government service, Younger was senior associate director for national security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  He was responsible for assuring the safety and reliability of most of America's nuclear deterrent, and managed a wide array of capabilities and facilities ranging from basic research to plutonium manufacturing.  Younger was a driving force in the development of a new approach to strategic forces and deterrence in the post Cold War era, one that emphasized reductions in the nuclear stockpile and greater use of conventional weapons for strategic applications.  He was the founder and first director of the Center for International Security Affairs at Los Alamos and took a leading role in opening the Russian nuclear weapons institutes for international collaboration.  In 2001, he organized the conference Supercomputing and the Human Endeavor, bringing together a wide array of thought leaders to address the challenges and applications of advanced computer technology.

From 1982 to 1989, Younger was a nuclear weapons designer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., where he developed and oversaw the testing of several new concepts in nuclear explosives.  During this time, he also developed a new technique for the study of dense plasmas based on quantum molecular dynamics and proposed the existence of quasi-molecular states in warm dense matter.  He previously served as computational atomic theorist at the National Bureau of Standards in Gaithersburg, MD where he discovered giant resonances in the electronic impact ionization of heavy ions.

Younger has published more than 80 papers in physics, public policy, and anthropology.  His book Endangered Species: How We Can Avoid Mass Destruction and Build a Lasting Peace, offers a comprehensive approach to reducing the threat from weapons of mass destruction.  His book The Bomb: A New History, deals with the history and future of nuclear weapons.  His newest book, Calculating Chiefs: Simulating Leadership, Violence, and Warfare in Oceania, is the first large-scale attempt to merge the formality of computer simulation with anthropology.  Stephen Younger is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He is the recipient of the Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Public Service and the Gold Medal from the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Younger earned his bachelor's degree in physics from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in 1973; a master's degree in physics from the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., in 1975; and a doctorate degree in physics from the University of Maryland in 1978.  He resides in Los Alamos, New Mexico.