Pranay Vaddi

Pranay Vaddi is currently a senior nuclear fellow in the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From May 2022 to January 2025, he served as special assistant to President Joe Biden and senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation at the National Security Council. Prior to this, he served as a senior advisor in the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance at the Department of State, where he coordinated the department’s inputs for the Biden Nuclear Posture Review. Previously, he was a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focused on developing recommendations for U.S. nuclear posture and arms control policy, and examined Congress’s role in arms control. He served for several years at the U.S. Department of State, where he was the interagency coordinator for policy on the New START Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and joined numerous arms control delegations. He has testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and before the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He has also been quoted in numerous publications, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, and The Economist, and published in Lawfare and The Hill, along with numerous Carnegie publications. He holds a BS in biochemistry and a BA in political science from the University of Rochester and a JD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.