Dr. Michael Barak is a senior researcher at the International Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT) where he serves as the head of the Global Jihad & Palestinian terrorism research desks. He is a lecturer at the Lauder School of Government Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University where he is teaching courses on Global Jihad, Middle East studies, Palestinian terrorist organizations; Standard and Colloquial Arabic (Palestinian dialect).Dr. Barak is also a senior researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East Studies (MDC) where he is focusing on Modern Egypt. He is also a senior fellow at the Usanas Foundation in India. Dr. Barak holds Ph.D. in Middle Eastern and African Studies, from Tel Aviv University. His Ph.D. dissertation was written on “Sufism in Wahhabi and Salafi Polemic Discourse in Egypt and the Mashriq (Arab East) 1967-2001”.Dr. Barak holds both a B.A. and an M.A. degree in “Middle Eastern Studies” and “Arabic Language & Islamic Studies” from Tel Aviv University.Dr. Barak holds a Teaching certificate in Arabic Language & Culture from Tele Aviv University.He has participated in several international programs including: “Study of Turkish Language and Culture” at Boğziçi University, Istanbul (2005) and the “Study of the US National Security Policymaking” at the Institute for Training & Development (Amherst), USA (2014).Dr. Barak has published articles in Hebrew and English on his research topics as following 1. Modern Egypt2. Islamic Terrorism (al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas) 3. Counter-terrorism.4. Political Islam5. Salafi movements in the Arab world6. Sufi movements in the Arab world7. Social media networks in the Arab World.barakm@runi.ac.il