Los Alamos Study Group
Directors and Staff

Greg Mello, Executive Director, was a founder of the Los Alamos Study Group and has led its varied activities since its inception, 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 an intensive background in the physical sciences and mathematics (Harvey Mudd College 1971, with distinction) and as a regional planner with emphases in environmental planning and regional economics (Harvard 1975, with distinction, HUD Fellowship in Urban Studies). In 1972, Greg led an environmental studies program for Pitzer College in Santa Fe. 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 and a later consultant to that program. 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.

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.

Trish Williams-Mello, Operations Director, has been on the staff of the Los Alamos Study Group since 2003, in charge of web design and maintenance, communications, administration, and bookkeeping. She moved to New Mexico in the summer of 2000 after taking a job as Director of Admissions and Horsemanship Instructor with Brush Ranch School, a small private boarding school in the mountains north of Pecos, NM. Before her move, Trish worked as the Operations and Development Director for Serious Texans Against Nuclear Dumping (STAND) of Amarillo from 1990-2000. She also co-founded the Panhandle Area Neighbors And Landowners (PANAL), as well as the Pantex Plant Citizens Advisory Board. Trish served as a director on other boards while in Texas -- the Panhandle Water Planning Group, Potter County Farm Bureau as President, and the Texas Feed Grains Advisory Board, while farming and raising her four children on their family farm across the road from the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Facility.