Dr. Rupal N. Mehta is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is currently a Faculty Fellow with the Nebraska Strategic Research Institute and a Research Collaborator at the Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS) at the University of California, San Diego. She also serves as a consultant for the Director’s Strategic Resilience Initiative in the National Security and International Studies Office at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a consultant for the Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction for the U.S. Department of State. Previously, she was a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow in the Belfer Center's International Security Program and Project on Managing the Atom at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Her research interests lie in international security and conflict, with a specialization in nuclear nonproliferation/counter-proliferation, extended deterrence, nuclear latency, force structure, and deterrence and coercion strategy. Dr. Mehta's first two books, Delaying Doomsday: The Politics of Nuclear Reversal (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Atomic Uncertainty: Information Problems in Nuclear Negotiations (under review), explore the conditions under which states that have started nuclear weapons programs stop their pursuit. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly and her commentary has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, War on the Rocks, International Studies Quarterly, and the Washington Post's Monkey Cage. She has received support from the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, the Stanton Foundation, USSTRATCOM, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Senning Foundation, the University of California San Diego, and the University of Nebraska.