Dr. Gary Ackerman is an Associate Professor in the College of Homeland Security, Emergency Preparedness and Cybersecurity and Director of the Center for Advanced Red Teaming at the University at Albany. His research focuses on understanding how terrorists and other adversaries make tactical, operational and strategic decisions, particularly with regard to innovating in their use of weapons and tactics. Much of his work in this area is centered on the motivations and capabilities for non-state actors to acquire and use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. In addition to his faculty position at Albany, Ackerman is the Founding Director of the Unconventional Weapons and Technology Division at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), to which he remains a Senior Advisor. Previous positions have included Research Director and Special Projects Director at START and before that the Director of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism Research Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.

Ackerman has headed more than ten large government-sponsored research projects in the past five years dealing with various aspects of counterterrorism policy and operations. He has also initiated and contributed to several terrorism-related datasets. These include the Profiles of Incidents involving CBRN and Non-state Actors (POICN) database, the Chemical and Biological Non-State Adversary Database (CABNSAD), the Nuclear Facilities Attack Database (NuFAD), the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and the Terrorist Ideology Database (TID).

Ackerman is the co-editor of Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction (CRC Press, 2009), the editor of a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Security titled: Designing Danger: Complex Engineering by Violent Non-State Actors, Volume 9, Issue 1 (Spring 2016) and has authored over seventy publications relating to various aspects of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. He is an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation in the United Kingdom, as well as an Associate at the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and the Project for Future Human Flourishing. Ackerman was a member of the WMD Expert Advisory Group of the Information Sharing Environment initiative, Office of the Director for National Intelligence (2007-2008) and has testified on terrorist motivations for using nuclear weapons before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security in April 2008.

Ackerman received his M.A. in International Relations (Strategic Studies) from Yale University and his Bachelors (Law, Mathematics, International Relations) and Honors (International Relations) degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He completed his PhD in War Studies at King’s College London, which dealt with the impact of emerging technologies on terrorist decisions relating to weapons adoption.

Peter Bergen is a journalist, documentary producer, vice president for global studies & fellows at New America, CNN national security analyst, professor of practice at Arizona State University where he co-directs the Center on the Future of War, and the author or editor of seven books, three of which were New York Times bestsellers and four of which were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by The Washington Post. The books have been translated into twenty-one languages. Documentaries based on his books have been nominated for two Emmys and also won the Emmy for best documentary.

Bergen is New America’s director of the International Security and Future of War programs. He writes a weekly column for CNN.com and is a member of the Aspen Homeland Security Group and a fellow at Fordham University’s Center on National Security. Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field. He has testified on Capitol Hill seventeen times about national security issues.

Bergen has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. For many years he was a contributing editor both at Foreign Policy and The New Republic and also a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security.

Bergen is the chairman of the board of the Global Special Operations Foundation, which is a non-profit advocating for the interests of special operations forces and is also on the board of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which advocates for Americans who are being held hostage and for journalists in conflict zones.

In 2011 he published The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda. The book won the Washington Institute’s $30,000 Gold Prize for the best book on the Middle East. In 2012 he published Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad. It won the Overseas Press Club award for the best book on international affairs. HBO based the film Manhunt on the book, which won the 2013 Emmy for best documentary. In 2013 he published Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics and Religion, a collection of essays about the Taliban that Bergen co-edited. In 2014 he published Drone Wars, a collection of essays about drone warfare that Bergen co-edited. In 2016, he published United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists and HBO adapted the book for the documentary film ‘Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma.’

Bergen has hosted, produced, or executive produced multiple documentaries for HBO, CNN, National Geographic, and Discovery. Bergen produced CNN Films, Legion of Brothers, which premiered at Sundance in January 2017 and was released theatrically. It was nominated for an Emmy in 2018. Bergen produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997. The interview, which aired on CNN, marked the first time that bin Laden declared war against the United States to a Western audience.

Bergen has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines around the world including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Time, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, Prospect, La Repubblica, Die Welt and Der Spiegel. He has a degree in Modern History from New College, Oxford.

Bergen is married to the documentary director/producer Tresha Mabile. They have two children.

Dr. Michael Boyle is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers Camden in New Jersey. He was previously an Assistant Professor of Political Science at La Salle University in Philadelphia as well as a Lecturer in International Relations and Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of St. Andrews. He is also an alumnus of the Political Science Department at La Salle.

His research interests are on terrorism and political violence, with particular reference to the strategic use of violence in insurgencies and civil wars. He has also published more broadly on security studies and American foreign policy. His writings have appeared in a range of scholarly journals and popular outlets, including regular columns for the Guardian (UK).  His most recent book, Violence after War: Explaining Instability in Post-Conflict States, was published by Johns’ Hopkins University Press in March 2014.

Dr. Kurt Braddock is an Assistant Professor of Public Communication at American University. His research focuses on the persuasive tactics employed by terrorist organizations to achieve strategic objectives, including recruitment and radicalization. Dr. Braddock also studies how researchers, analysts, and security professionals can use persuasion theory to inform the development of measures geared towards counter-radicalization. His work has been featured in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence, Communication Monographs, and other communication- and security-related outlets. He is the author of an upcoming book titled Weaponized Words: The Strategic Role of Persuasion in Radicalization and Counter-Radicalization (Cambridge University Press, 2020) which provides researchers, practitioners, and laypersons with information related to persuasion theory in the realm of political violence. He also consults with government and non-government organizations, including the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center, the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, on issues related to counter-messaging.

Emily Gorcenski is a data scientist, an activist for social justice, and the creator of First Vigil, a database of far-right prosecutions. Gorcenski studied computational mathematics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and has worked as a technologist for over fifteen years. Within this context, her work has focused on the technology industry, working on both its internal matters such as workplace discrimination, and its external influences, such as the ethics of data, privacy, social media, and ubiquitous physical computing.

As a survivor of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi attacks, Gorcenski has experienced far-right violence first-hand. This experience motivated her to research, track, and assess far-right threats in hope to understand the movement and to prevent future incidents. From this work, she has identified and exposed several far-right figures who have participated in white supremacist, white nationalist, and neo-Nazi rallies throughout the United States, including several members of the United States Military.

In addition to her professional work as a data scientist, Gorcenski frequently speaks, writes, and consults on matters pertaining to the far-right. She helped research and appeared in Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, a ProPublica- and PBS FRONTLINE-produced documentary about the groups connected to the Unite the Right rally in 2017. She has published works on white supremacist activity in the United States, ranging from the influence of mainstream politics and media on the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, to the involvement of far-right street gangs with links to mainstream political parties. For her efforts here, and for her work creating First Vigil, Gorcenski was recently named as one of 2018s most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine.

A skilled technologist, Gorcenski has deep experience in scientific computing and engineering research and development. Her background is in mathematical analysis, with a focus on probability theory and numerical analysis. She currently develops principally in Python, though she has a background that includes C#/.Net, Unity3D, SQL, and MATLAB. Critically, she has experience in statistics and experimental design, and has served as Principal Investigator in NIH-funded clinical research projects. Emily now works and resides in Berlin, Germany.

Dr. John Horgan is Distinguished University Professor at Georgia State University with joint appointments in the Global Studies Institute and Department of Psychology where he also directs the Violent Extremism Research Group (VERG). Professor Horgan is one of the world’s leading experts on terrorist psychology and his current research examines psychological constraints on tactical choices made by terrorist recruiters, the psychology of religious converts and their involvement in violence, and role differentiation in terrorist networks.

His work is widely published, with books including The Psychology of Terrorism (now in its second edition and published in over a dozen languages worldwide), Divided We Stand: The Strategy and Psychology of Ireland’s Dissident Terrorists; Walking Away from Terrorism, Leaving Terrorism Behind, and Terrorism Studies: A Reader. He is an Editor of the journal Terrorism and Political Violence, Consulting Editor of American Psychologist, and serves on the Editorial Boards of several additional publications including Legal and Criminological Psychology, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Journal of Strategic Security. He is a member of the Research Working Group of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.

He has held positions at the University of Massachusetts (Lowell), Penn State, University of St. Andrews, and University College, Cork. Professor Horgan’s research has been featured in such venues as The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, CNN, Vice News, Rolling Stone Magazine, TIME, Nature, Scientific American and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dr. Erin Kearns is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.

Her primary research utilizes a multidisciplinary and multi-method framework to understand the relationship among the public, law enforcement, and terrorist organizations. Her other research interests include violence and nonviolence in conflict and geographic patterns of crime and violence.

She has authored numerous papers, including When to Take Credit for Terrorism: A Cross-National Examination of Claims and Attributions,” “Why Do Some Terrorist Attacks Receive More Media Attention Than Others,” and When Data Don’t Matter: Exploring Public Perceptions of Terrorism.” She has been an invited guest for multiple media outlets, including NPR’s All Things Considered (Code Switch segment), ABC Australia (Radio National), and CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin. She is also the recipient of many research grants and academic awards.

She holds a PhD in Criminology and Public Policy from the School of Public Affairs at American University,an MA in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a BA in Political Science and Psychology from Miami University.

Professor Richard E. Rubenstein is University Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at George Mason University, holding degrees from Harvard College, Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar), Harvard Law School, and the University of Malta. A former lawyer, political scientist, and director of S-CAR, he is the author of nine books about various types of violent social conflict and the possibilities of resolving them nonviolently. His most recent book is Resolving Structural Conflicts: Violent Systems and How They Can Be Transformed (Routledge, 2017). Rubenstein teaches grad and undergrad courses on conflict theory and speaks publicly on issues of peace and social justice.

Dr. Ryan Scrivens is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University (MSU). He is also a Visiting Researcher at the VOX-Pol Network of Excellence and a Research Associate at the International CyberCrime Research Centre (ICCRC) at Simon Fraser University (SFU).

Ryan conducts problem-oriented, interdisciplinary research, with a focus on the local, national, and international threat of terrorism, violent extremism, and hatred as it evolves on- and offline. His primary research interests include terrorists and extremists use of the Internet, right-wing terrorism and extremism, preventing and countering violent extremism, hate crime, research methods and methodology, and computational social science. His research can be found in, amongst others, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, Deviant Behavior, and Critical Criminology.

He has presented his research before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Swedish Defence Research Agency in Stockholm, and the Centre of Excellence for National Security in Singapore, to name a few. His research has been funded by Public Safety Canada, the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS), and the VOX-Pol Network of Excellence. Ryan’s work has been featured in over 100 new stories (television, radio, print) and covered by an array of national and international media sources, including BBC News, The New York Times, and CBC News.

He received a PhD in criminology from SFU, as well as an MA and BA (Hons) in criminology from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT).

William Braniff was the Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) and a Professor of the Practice at the University of Maryland. He previously served as the Director of Practitioner Education and an Instructor at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). There he led the practitioner education program, the nation’s largest provider of counterterrorism education to federal, state and local governmental audiences.

Braniff is a graduate of the United States Military Academy where he received his bachelor’s degree. Following his Company Command as an Armor Officer in the U.S. Army, Braniff attended the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) where he received a master’s degree in international relations. Upon graduation, Bill worked in the nuclear counterterrorism field at the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, and as a research associate with the CTC Harmony Project at West Point.

Braniff lectures frequently for counterterrorism audiences in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joint Special Operations University, National Defense University, the United States Attorneys’ Office, the Foreign Service Institute, the Diplomatic Security Service, Defense Intelligence Agency and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Braniff has also taken a keen interest in the field of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). He has consulted with the Department of Justice, the FBI and the National Security Staff, playing a key role in an interagency working group dedicated to the topic. In June of 2013, Bill testified before Congress regarding American attitudes towards terrorism and counterterrorism, and in February of 2014 and again in February 2015 he testified before the House Armed Services Committee on the evolving nature of global jihadism. Also in February of 2015, Bill was asked to speak at the White House CVE Summit, to the United Nations Counterterrorism Executive Directorate, and to the Global Counterterrorism Forum Foreign Terrorist Fighter Working group.

Braniff is also heavily involved in public education. His speaking engagements include Council on Foreign Relations and World Affairs Council events in cities around the country. In May of 2010, Bill took part in the National September 11th Museum and Memorial Speaker Series and is featured in the Museum’s educational webcast series. He has been interviewed on numerous occasions by National Public Radio, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News and by a host of additional international, national and local print and radio media outlets.

William Braniff served as a member of tPP Advisory Board from its founding until April 2023.

Seamus Hughes is the Deputy Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He is an expert on terrorism, homegrown violent extremism, and countering violent extremism (CVE). Hughes has authored numerous reports for the Program including ISIS in America: From Retweets to Raqqa and The Travelers: American Jihadists in Syria and Iraq. He regularly provides commentary to media outlets, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, BBC, PBS, and CBS’ 60 Minutes. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions.

Hughes previously worked at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), serving as a lead staffer on U.S. government efforts to implement a national CVE strategy. Hughes created a groundbreaking intervention program to help steer individuals away from violence through non-law enforcement means, and worked closely with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, Fusion Centers, and U.S. Attorney Offices.

Prior to NCTC, Hughes served as the Senior Counterterrorism Advisor for the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He authored two reports for the Senate: A Ticking Time Bomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government’s Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack and Zachary Chesser: A Case Study in Online Islamist Radicalization and Its Meaning for the Threat of Homegrown Terrorism. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland, and a recipient of the National Security Council Outstanding Service Award and two NCTC Director’s Awards for outstanding service. He teaches classes at George Washington University and Georgetown University.

Seamus Hughes served as a member of tPP Advisory Board from its founding until May 2023.