Los Alamos Study Group
Directors and Staff
May 2009

Darwin BondGraham is a writer, historian, and ethnographer. He lives and works variously in California, New Orleans, and New Mexico. His research engages histories of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the big three, poverty, racism, and militarism. Darwin's political work involves organizing against war and militarism, and against racist economic policies that harm working class folks, particularly issues related to housing.

Rosamund Evans is a long-time peace and disarmament activist and retired teacher that is an active member and leader within the Gray Panthers, Grandmothers for Peace, Alliance of Retired Americans and the New Mexico Green Party. Rosamund also recently co-founded the organization, Friends of the Albuquerque Tribune (FOAT), that formed when the newspaper of that same name went out of business on Feb. 23, 2008. The FOAT now publishes its own print and on-line newspaper with distribution mostly in New Mexico.

Beverly E.C. Gattis, President of STAND, a citizens’ environmental organization in the Texas panhandle.  STAND was organized in the mid-1980’s to oppose the Department of Energy's (DOE) plans to build a high-level nuclear waste repository in Deaf Smith County, Texas .  After its key role in the defeat of the waste dump, STAND expanded its environmental focus to include oversight of the DOE's Pantex Nuclear Weapons facility.  In the 1990s Beverly and Trish were active intervenors in DOE decisions regarding Pantex.

Andrew Lichterman, long-time peace and environmental activist, is a lawyer and policy analyst for the Oakland, California based Western States Legal Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1982 and dedicated to a peaceful and nuclear free future.

Willem Malten, owner and operator of CloudCliff Bakery, Café, and Artspace in Santa Fe, NM, is also an active filmmaker and artist.  Willem has produced and directed documentary films such as “Cry at the End of the 20th Century,” which shed a penetrating light on Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Greg Mello (Secretary and Executive Director) is a co-founder of the Study Group.  Since 1992, Greg has led the Study Group in its research on the activities of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and in environmental review and analysis, as well as congressional education, community organizing, litigation, and advertising.  From time to time, Greg has served as a consulting analyst and writer for other nuclear policy organizations.  Greg was originally educated as an engineer (Harvey Mudd College, 1971, with distinction) and regional planner (Harvard, 1975, HUD Fellow in Urban Studies). He has also worked as a supervising hydrogeologist for the New Mexico Environment Department.  In 2002, Greg was a Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security.  Greg's research, analysis, and opinions have been published in the Washington Post, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Issues in Science and Technology, in the New Mexico press, and elsewhere.

Dr. Zia Mian teaches and works at Princeton University ’s Woodrow Wilson School in its Program on Science and Global Security.  He has extensive experience in anti-nuclear movements in the United Kingdom, South Asia, and the U.S., both as a participant and as an academic observer and advisor.  He has written and taught broadly on a variety of nuclear issues, including but by no means limited to South Asian nuclear weapons and nuclear power and related political issues.

Peter Neils (President) has been engaged in participatory democracy for over thirty-five years.  He has written and performed his own music since his late teens.  He studied at the State University of New York and the Rochester Institute.  He apprenticed with a contemporary furniture maker in Provincetown, Massachusetts for several years before moving to a small farm on the coast of Maine, where he practiced low-impact, sustainable forestry and raised organic vegetables for thirty years while pursuing a successful career in high-end architectural woodworking.

Shigeko Sasamori, a hibakusha from Hiroshima was 13 when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on her home town. Shigeko has devoted her life to the cause of peace, especially the abolition of nuclear weapons with an emphasis on protecting the earth for our children and families.  Now living in California, Shigeko has traveled to New Mexico numerous times to share her story and promote nuclear disarmament at Study Group events. 

Trish Williams-Mello (Operations Director) was for many years the Operations and Development Director for STAND in Amarillo, TX .  She raised her four children on their family farm across the road from the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Facility.  Upon moving to New Mexico in 2000 she volunteered for the Study Group for two years while working as the Admissions Director and Horsemanship Instructor for Brush Ranch School.  She became Operations Director in 2003.