Jean-Loup Samaan is a senior research fellow at the Middle East University of the National University of Singapore and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Prior to that, Dr. Samaan was a policy analyst at the Directorate for Strategic Affairs of the French Ministry of Defense (2008-2011), research advisor at the NATO Defense College (2011-2016), and most recently associate professor in strategic studies at the Abu Dhabi-based UAE National Defense College (2016-2021). He authored four books and several peer-reviewed articles and he is a regular contributor on strategic affairs for The National. Samaan holds a PhD in political science from the University of Paris 1 (2009) and an accreditation to supervise research from Sciences Po (2017).