Fotini Christia is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC). She received her PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University in 2008 and has been awarded an inaugural Andrew Carnegie fellowship and a Harvard Academy fellowship among others. Her research interests deal with issues of conflict and cooperation in the Muslim world, and she has worked out of Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian Territories. Her book, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars, published by Cambridge University Press in 2012, was awarded the Luebbert Award for Best Book in Comparative Politics, the Lepgold Prize for Best Book in International Relations and the Distinguished Book Award of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section of the International Studies Association. Her research has also appeared in Science, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Development Economics, American Political Science Review, and Journal of Comparative Politics, among other journals. Fotini Christia has written opinion pieces for Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. She graduated magna cum laude with a joint BA in Economics-Operations Research and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University in 2001.