Rohan Gunaratna is Professor of Security Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is also Honorary Professor at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University and is Senior Advisor to its Faculty of Defence and Strategic Studies. He received his Masters from the University of Notre Dame where he was Hesburgh Scholar and doctorate from the University of St Andrews where he was British Chevening Scholar.

At the invitation of the Singapore government in 2002, he established the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Reseach. In 2015, the Ministry of Defence, Sri Lanka, invited him to write the blue print for a think tank that he named the Institute of National Security Studies. At the invitation of the Ministry of Defence of Indonesia in 2019, he designed ASEAN Our Eyes, the regional intelligence network.

The author of the international bestseller “Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror” (Columbia University Press) and coauthor “Three Pillars of Radicalisation: Needs, Narratives and Networks” (Oxford University Press), Gunaratna edited the Insurgency and Terrorism Series of the Imperial College Press, London. A trainer for national security agencies, law enforcement authorities and military counter terrorism units he was consultant to Detainee Task Force 134 in Iraq and Joint Task Force 435 in Afghanistan. He interviewed terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and other conflict zones.

A former Senior Fellow at the United States Military Academy at West Point and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Gunaratna was invited to testify on the structure of al Qaeda before the 9/11 Commission. Admiral William McRaven appointed him to the International Senior Advisory Panel of the US Special Operations Command. For advancing international intelligence cooperation, Gunaratna received the Major General Ralph H. Van Deman Award.