From 2002-7, Pierce Corden was Director of Administration for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization's Preparatory Commission in Vienna, Austria.  He oversaw the development and implementation of an annual $100 million program for the build-up of the Treaty's 337-facility International Monitoring System, its Global Communications Infrastructure and International Data Center in Vienna, and for preparations for on-site inspections.   He was also responsible for contracts, human resources, building management and security.  From 1994-2001 Dr. Corden directed the offices in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and then the Department of State, responsible for negotiation of the CTBT and the subsequent activities of the Preparatory Commission, where he represented the United States from 1997-2001. 

Prior to that time he served as Deputy Executive Chairman of the UN Special Commission (for Iraq) in 1993; Chief of ACDA's division for the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from 1989-92; Executive Secretary of the U.S. Delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, 1982-9; and Physical Science Officer in ACDA, 1971-82.  In addition to nuclear weapon testing, Dr. Corden worked on a wide range of arms control issues in the CD, the UN, OSCE and bilaterally.  These included environmental warfare, radiological, biological and chemical weapons, and the "cut-off" of fissile-material production.  In 1977-8 he was a research fellow at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.  Dr. Corden received his Ph.D. in solid-state physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.  He has two grown children, and lives with his wife Marja Janmaat in suburban Washington, D.C.