ELLY ROSTOUM

Elly Rostoum is an American political scientist, and a former U.S. intelligence analyst, serving bipartisan administrations. She is currently a Lecturer in Strategic Studies at the Zanvyl Krieger School for Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, an Adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a nonresident Fellow at the SAIS China Research Center. Elly teaches courses on China, international relations, international political economy, and national security vulnerabilities of emerging technologies. She was formerly the founding Managing Director of the Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies, at Johns Hopkins University.

Elly is the Principal Investigator of the BULL DRAGON Project, which employs a multidisciplinary approach integrating machine learning, discourse analysis, and process tracing to uncover and map the ownership and incorporation structures of Chinese commercial entities, across strategic sectors and jurisdictions. Elly’s research examines American national security vulnerabilities of foreign direct investment, with a focus on foundational and critical and emerging technologies in the AI, finance, biotech, and IoT sectors. Elly is an expert on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ (CFIUS) governance. Her current book project, Bull Dragon: State Control and the Instrumentalization of the Chinese Firm, examines American and Chinese conceptualizations of national security, and their implications on how each nation defines their grand strategies vis-à-vis one another. Elly was the recipient of the 2024 Johns Hopkins Nexus Award in Teaching for the course: Biotech, Health Security, and Artificial Intelligence. She was also the recipient of the 2023 Johns Hopkins University Discovery Awards, which recognize researchers who are poised to arrive at important discoveries or creative works. Elly is a co-founder of the RUBICON Symposium, a partnership with researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. Elly was formerly the Associate Director of the China Research Center at Johns Hopkins University, and a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow in U.S. Grand Strategy at Notre Dame University.

Elly is fluent in classical Arabic, the 22 Arabic dialects, and French. She is conversant in Spanish and German, and a (forever) beginner in Mandarin Chinese. Elly has lived and traveled extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East, and has conducted field research in Austria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Morocco. Methodologically, Elly specializes in gaming, scenario planning, and modeling. Elly began her career in the private sector, forecasting oil prices and advising C-suite executives in the energy sector, covering supply and demand trends, geopolitics, above-ground risk management, and the electrification of the global drivetrain. Her research has been prolifically published in industry and policymaking circles.

As a graduate student, Elly was awarded the White House Internship, the Google Public Policy Fellowship, the CIA’s graduate fellowship in energy markets, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s fellowship in energy policy and electric systems analysis. Elly holds a Ph.D. in Global Governance and Human Security from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, a Master’s degree in Liberal Arts in Government from Harvard University, a Certificate in Decision Analysis & Risk Management from Stanford University, a Certificate in Energy Modeling from the International Energy Agency, and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Bates College.