Dr Elena Buglova has over 30 years of professional experience in the area of nuclear safety, nuclear security and emergency preparedness and response.

Dr Buglova has been the Director of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Security since the start of 2021. Before that, she was the first woman Head of the IAEA Incident and Emergency Center (IEC). In that function, she led the Full Response Mode operations within the IAEA’s response to the Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011. Throughout the years in the IAEA, she was personally dealing with, or managing at the executive level, response to various nuclear safety and nuclear security related events.

Before joining the IAEA in 2002, Dr. Buglova was the Head of the Laboratory of Radiation Safety and Risk Analysis at the Institute of Radiation Medicine of Belarus. She was directly involved in activities aimed at minimizing consequences of the Chernobyl NPP accident to the population of Belarus. She was also directly dealing with the control of radioactive sources, including registry of radioactive sources, and was one of the 6 co-developers of the national regulatory norms, which addressed matters of nuclear security and represented a regulatory document at the state level.

She holds both a PhD and DSc in medical science.