Robert Berls serves as a senior advisor, nuclear materials security and director of Nuclear Threat Initiative's Moscow office. Having joined NTI in its first year, Berls has directed or helped manage all of NTI's projects in Russia that have addressed nuclear, chemical and biological threats.

Among other projects, he led the NTI initiative at Russia's SarovLabs, part of a U.S.-Russian effort to find new commercial avenues for the former Soviet Union's "Nuclear Cities" which supported the country's nuclear weapons complex. NTI helped the lab develop international marketing capabilities, which led to a multifold increase in revenue and staff size, ensuring there were alternatives to seeking work that could contribute to global proliferation. He also managed NTI's role to fund high-priority infrastructure development for the Shchuch'ye Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility in Siberia, to help Russia meet its goal to destroy all chemical weapons by 2012.

Berls represents NTI on the Carnegie Endowment's Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative (EASI), a high-level international commission addressing Euro-Atlantic security needs for the twenty-first century. NTI co-chairman and chief executive officer, former Senator Sam Nunn, serves as an EASI co-chair. Berls is serving as executive director of an EASI working group on missile defense.

Berls' career spans military, government, academia and business. He served 26 years in the U.S. Air Force, rising to the rank of colonel. During the 1980s he served as air attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. He served as special assistant to the Secretary of Energy for Russia/NIS programs, during the first Clinton Administration.

His academic credentials include teaching positions at the National War College, National Defense University and the U.S. Air Force Academy. Before joining NTI, he was vice president for business development and government relations for a U.S. oil company.

Berls holds a doctorate in Russian area studies from Georgetown University, a master's degree in Soviet Studies from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree in Russian Area Studies from Colgate University. He speaks Russian fluently.