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Hannah Rifkin ’17 Awarded Honorable Mention in U.N. Essay Contest

December 7, 2016

Hannah Rifkin '17 and Chair of the 1540 Committee and Permanent Representative of Spain to the…

Hannah Rifkin ’17 has been awarded Honorable Mention in an international essay competition sponsored by the Stimson Center and the United Nations Security Council.

Hannah’s essay, which she wrote over the summer, is a national action plan for the nonproliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Turkmenistan. All the winning essays are available online.

The contest drew submissions from graduate and undergraduate students in 44 countries on how best to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540, which obligates member states to develop measures preventing the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Hannah, whose research interests include cyber security and U.S./Russian relations, was one of five finalists in the competition, and she finished highest in the contest out of any undergraduate.

Her essay also caught the attention of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which published a slightly modified version of the essay on their website.

“I'm really excited about this and couldn't have done this without Bryn Mawr,” says Hannah.

A Russian major, Hannah studied in Moscow during the 2015–2016 academic year and spent last summer interning at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

After graduating, Hannah hopes to find an opportunity that connects what she has learned at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies and at Bryn Mawr.