Kayla Lucero-Matteucci works jointly for Cambridge’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk and Leverhulme Center on the Future of Intelligence (CFI), with primary research interests in climate change, energy systems, and artificial intelligence. As a 2021 Marshall Scholar, she completed master’s degrees at the University of Cambridge in Politics and International Studies and at the University of East Anglia in Climate Change and International Development.
Kayla worked for six years in nuclear policy, with primary interests in safeguards for nuclear energy facilities, environmental and climatic consequences of nuclear detonations, cyber threats to nuclear arsenals, and challenges to nuclear warhead verification for treaty purposes. In her previous work at Leverhulme CFI, she examined risks posed by the increased introduction of AI in defence settings, including nuclear command and control.
She was the 2019-20 recipient of the Fulbright United Kingdom Open Award, collaborating with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a member of several UK diplomatic delegations and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science and Security Studies. She has previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Sandia National Laboratories, and at the United Nations as a member of civil society.
Kayla is originally from the unceded southern Tiwa territories of Albuquerque and Placitas, New Mexico. In her free time, she is a jazz and blues keyboardist and documentary filmmaker.