Daniel P. Serwer, who has supervised the United States Institute of Peace's (USIP) efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, Haiti and Sudan, will now lead the growing Centers of Innovation at the Institute, overseeing a wide range of cutting edge projects. Serwer, who was the founding vice president of USIP's Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations, will now focus full-time on innovation in rule of law, religion and peacemaking, sustainable economies, media and conflict, science and technology, security sector reform, and other areas related to peacebuilding.

"We are delighted that Dan is going to focus on the truly innovative work that the Institute is engaged in around the world," said Richard H. Solomon, president of USIP. "Dan really took USIP into the field and on-the-ground in the 1990s through his work in the Balkans and Iraq on post-conflict operations," he added.

Serwer has worked on preventing interethnic and interreligious conflict in Iraq, and was deeply engaged in facilitating dialogue between Serbs and Albanians in the Balkans. He came to the Institute as a senior fellow working on Balkan regional security in 1998-1999. Before that, he was a minister-counselor at the Department of State, where he won six performance awards.

Serwer served from 1994 to 1996 as U.S. special envoy and coordinator for the Bosnian Federation, mediating between Croats and Muslims and negotiating the first agreement reached at the Dayton peace talks. From 1990 to 1993, he was deputy chief of mission and charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, where he led a major diplomatic mission through the end of the Cold War and the first Gulf War.