Indo-Pacific

Yukimasa Matsuzawa is a GMF Indo-Pacific resident fellow focused on the intersection of health security and foreign policy. He also serves as a 2024–2025 Congressional fellow under the American Political Science Association–Sasakawa Peace Foundation Fellowship.

Matsuzawa previously served in key roles in Japan and international health security infrastructure. He was deputy director of the Global Outbreak Intelligence, Capacity Building, and Deployment Coordination Center at the Japan Institute for Health Security, where he led collaborations with partners across the United States, Europe, and Indo-Pacific. He also worked as a medical officer in the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, when he had a one-year secondment to the US Department of Health and Human Services as a medical liaison.

Matsuzawa holds a PhD from the University of Tokyo and has expertise in pandemic influenza and biosecurity. He conducts research at Japan’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies on strategies against AI-driven biological threats. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals on virology and health security.

Sameer Lalwani is a Washington, DC-based non-resident senior fellow in GMF’s Indo-Pacific program. He is also senior adviser with the Special Competitive Studies Project, a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, and a research affiliate with the MIT Security Studies Program. His research interests include deterrence, conventional military competition, technology alliances, and Indo-Pacific security. He is also a contributing editor to War on the Rocks.

Lalwani was previously a senior expert at the US Institute of Peace, where he led work sponsored by the US Department of Defense on the India-China battlespace (military strategy that integrates multiple armed forces into a theater of operation) and on US-India defense technology cooperation, including on INDUS-X. He was also director of the South Asia Program at the Stimson Center, an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, a term member with the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Stanton Nuclear Security postdoctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation. 

Lalwani’s work has been published in leading academic journals and analytical outlets. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Berkeley and a PhD from MIT.