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. He is co-editor of Science & Global Security, the international technical journal of arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament and also 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. In addition to his scholarly articles, he is the co-author of Unmaking the Bomb (MIT Press, 2014) and editor of several books and has made two documentary films on peace and security in South Asia. Mian is a co-founder of the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction.

Mian 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. He received the American Physical Society’s 2019 Leo Szilard Award “For promoting global peace and nuclear disarmament." In 2021, he 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 serves on the Boards of the Arms Control Association and of the Union of Concerned Scientists. In 2022, Mian was appointed to the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. In 2023, he became a member and was elected co-chair of the Scientific Advisory Group of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons