Rohan Gunaratna is Honorary Professor at the Kotalawala Defence University Sri Lanka and a Senior Advisor to its Department of Defence and Strategic Studies. He is also a Professor of Security Studies at the Nanyang Technology University, Singapore.

He received his Masters from the University of Notre Dame in the US where he was Hesburgh Scholar and his doctorate from the University of St Andrews in the UK where he was British Chevening Scholar. A former Senior Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Centre 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.

The editor and author of over 30 books including Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (University of Columbia Press), Gunaratna edited the Insurgency and Terrorism Series of the Imperial College Press, London. He is a trainer for national security agencies, law enforcement authorities and military counter terrorism units, interviewed terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia and other conflict zones. For advancing international intelligence cooperation, Gunaratna received the Major General Ralph H. Van Deman Award.