Los Alamos Study Group
Directors and Staff

Greg Mello, Executive Director, is a founder of the Los Alamos Study Group and has led its varied activities since 1992, including policy research, environmental analysis, congressional education and lobbying, community organizing, litigation (FOIA, civil rights, NEPA), advertising, and the nuts and bolts of funding and running a small nonprofit. From time to time he has served as a consulting analyst, writer, and spokesperson for other nuclear policy organizations. Greg was educated as a systems engineer with a broad scientific background (Harvey Mudd College, 1971, with distinction) and as a regional planner with emphases in environmental planning and regional economics (Harvard, 1975, with distinction, HUD Fellow in Urban Studies). During the early 1980s Greg was a high school science and math teacher, then a hazardous waste inspector and statewide hazardous materials incident commander, and in the late 1980s a supervising hydrogeologist, for the New Mexico Environment Department. In 1984 Greg led the first regulatory enforcement at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). In the early 1990s Greg was a consulting hydrologist in parallel with the early Study Group, with cleanup projects in New Mexico and California. In 2002, Greg was a Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. Greg’s research, analysis, and opinions have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Issues in Science and Technology, in the New Mexico press, and elsewhere. He has been interviewed thousands of times by U.S. and international news media (print, radio, and television). Greg’s research has been the source or impetus of many of these media articles and programs. In addition to speaking at hundreds of public meetings and events in New Mexico, Greg has been a guest speaker at several international disarmament events here and abroad.

Roberta (Xikome) Shinaberry, Acting Treasurer, is a resident of the beautiful Jemez Valley in New Mexico. A graduate of Washington and Jefferson College with a BA in biology, she worked in medical research laboratories at West Virginia University, University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins. Her area of work was cancer research, HIV transmission between mother and child and HIV vaccine research. Her areas of expertise are tissue culture and HIV virus culture. She advocates for equality, justice and a safe, healthy environment. Roberta was a founding member of the Jemez Action Group in 2016.

Steven Starr, Director, has been the Director of Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri in Columbia for 11 years. He obtained his degrees at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and he has also worked in clinical labs during the last 35 years as a Medical Technologist. Starr is an Associate of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and has been a Board Member and Senior Scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility. Starr also teaches a class for the MU Peace Studies Program entitled Nuclear Weapons: Environmental, Health, and Social Effects.

His work has been published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Federation of American Scientists, the International Commission for Nuclear Non-proliferation, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Strategic Arms Reduction website of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies, by the Scientists for Global Responsibility, and the International Network of Scientists Against Proliferation. Starr began making presentations at side panels at the United Nations in 2007, sometimes working as an expert witness for Switzerland, New Zealand, and Chile at the UN offices in NYC and Geneva. In 2010, Starr addressed the UN First Committee, discussing the environmental consequences of nuclear war, including nuclear winter and nuclear famine.

Rebecca (Bex) Hampton, Organizer and Research Associate, was born and raised across New Mexico in Bosque Farms, Los Alamos, and Albuquerque. While studying history, Arabic, economics and archeology abroad at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, during an intensification in the Syrian Civil War she witnessed first-hand the tragedy of U.S. intervention in the Middle East. After returning to New Mexico she has been helping build the movement against war and racism for the last decade in Albuquerque, amassing experience in organizing working class people to oppose the U.S. War Machine. Most recently, she has led popular campaigns to end the statewide prohibition on rent control and defend the right to abortion. In 2015 she earned a B.A. in International Studies & Linguistics with honors from the University of New Mexico.