Zia Mian is a physicist and co-director of Princeton University's  Program on Science and Global Security, part of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where he has worked since 1997. His research interests include issues of nuclear arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament and international peace and security. 

Mian serves as Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Group of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Established in 2023, the Scientific Advisory Group is the first international scientific body created by a United Nations treaty process for the purpose of advancing nuclear disarmament. 

In 2022, Mian was appointed for a two-year term to the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. It advises the UN Secretary-General on matters concerning arms limitation and disarmament, including studies and research.

Mian is a co-founder and serves on the steering committee of the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction. Founded at SGS in 2020, the Coalition works to reduce the threats from nuclear weapons by educating and mobilizing advocacy within the physical sciences communities in the United States and internationally to advance substantive changes in nuclear arsenals, force postures, and declaratory policies, and to achieve nuclear disarmament.

Mian also has served since 2016 as co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), a sixteen-country independent group of experts working to strengthen policy initiatives to end production and eliminate stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the key ingredients for nuclear weapons.

Mian serves on the Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Previously he served on the Board of the Arms Control Association, a national nonpartisan group promoting effective arms control policies, and of Peace Action, the largest US grassroots peace network. He also is co-editor of Science & Global Security, the international peer-reviewed journal of arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament science.

In 2021, Mian was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for “promoting global nuclear risk reduction and disarmament through academic research, public speaking, technical and popular writing, and organizing efforts.”

Mian received the American Physical Society’s 2019 Leo Szilard Award “For promoting global peace and nuclear disarmament particularly in South Asia, through academic research, public speaking, technical and popular writing and organizing efforts to ban nuclear weapons.”

He received the 2014 Linus Pauling Legacy Award for “his accomplishments as a scientist and as a peace activist in contributing to the global effort for nuclear disarmament and for a more peaceful world.”

In 2018, he was selected as one of the “60 faces of CND” by the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to mark its 60th anniversary.

Mian is the co-author of Unmaking the Bomb (MIT Press, 2014), editor and co-editor of several books, and author and co-author of academic and policy articles. In addition to his writing, he has made two documentary films on peace and security in South Asia.