Colin P. Clarke is an assistant teaching professor in the Institute for Politics and Strategy (IPS) at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also has responsibilities with the Institute for Strategic Analysis (ISA) and serves on the executive board for the Masters of Information Technology Strategy (MITS) program.

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Before joining CMU, Clarke spent nearly a decade at the RAND Corporation where he was a senior political scientist focusing on terrorism, insurgency and criminal networks. At RAND, Clarke directed studies on ISIS financing, the future of terrorism and transnational crime, and lessons learned from all insurgencies between the end of WWII and 2009. He was also a member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS) faculty.

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He is also an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), and a fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

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Clarke has briefed his research at a range of national and international security forums, including the U.S. Army War College, US Air Force Special Operations School, Society for Terrorism Research International Conference, the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) and the Counter ISIS Financing Group (CIFG), which is part of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. He has served as an expert witness on terrorism related topics, testifying before Congress on several occasions. In 2011, he spent several months as an analyst with Combined Joint Interagency Task Force-Shafafiyat at ISAF headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan, working for LTG H.R. McMaster, the former U.S. National Security Advisor.

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He appears frequently in the media, has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and has published his research in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Politico, Lawfare, and numerous scholarly journals, including Small Wars & Insurgencies, Historical Methods, and Military Operations Research.

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Clarke is the author of After the Caliphate: The Islamic State and the Terrorist Diaspora (2019), Terrorism: The Essential Reference Guide (2018), and Terrorism, Inc.: The Financing of Terrorism, Insurgency, and Irregular Warfare (2015).

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He received his Ph.D. in international security policy from the University of Pittsburgh