Amy J. Nelson is a Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, where her research focuses on arms control and emerging technologies, new European security initiatives, German military innovation, and prospects for arms control and non-proliferation in a new geopolitical landscape. She was previously a Research Fellow at National Defense University's Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction, a Robert Bosch Fellow in Berlin, Germany in residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), a policy analyst at the U.S. State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls in the Political-Military Affairs Bureau, and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Nelson is also a Research Scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, and on the faculty of Georgetown University's School of Public Policy, where she teaches a class on arms control, nonproliferation, and emerging security challenges.. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.